hi Henry here at tech advisor welcome to the first in a new series called Digital
Defenders where we're gonna take a look at how you should behave online because
we don't renew what we're doing all the time doing I'm here with my colleagues
Dom hi and Jim hello you might recognize them from previous videos on the channel
we are going to have a bit of a different format today we're gonna ask
ourselves why use a VPN and this fear today sponsored by nordian so yeah we're
basically going to run down a few of the different reasons you might use a VPN
online whether that's sort of worrying about protecting your data or if it's
just because you want to watch us Netflix from the UK and Jim here is
basically going to break down some of the technical side of it for us and get
into the nitty-gritty stuff yeah I mean we're all tech experts per se but Jim
really does know his stuff when it comes to VPNs so hi Jim hi it wasn't straight
up top Jim go why use a VPN well there's a few reasons
why you would use VPN first of all what it's done for first of all it stands for
virtual private network that sounds a bit like something that you might have
used in the 1990s to connect to a corporate network but these days
everyone uses them indeed like like say it that is actually what they were for
they were very much corporate thing but now it's a consumer facing thing people
including myself actually to be honest before didn't really understand what it
was and how it's beneficial to how I behave online so can you talk a bit
about online privacy and why people should think about using one well yeah
exactly I mean the whole thing about a VPN is that it keeps you private so
no-one can sort of spy on what you're doing ok so without a VPN you end up
with potential risks that other people could sort of you know eavesdrop on what
you're what you're looking at online and all your communications whereas with a
VPN is completely private because it's an encrypted connection so every time
that you're using a VPN there's no way that anyone can actually see what you're
doing so on the simplest level like what is it what is it doing to your
connections using using the web normally exactly so normally when you connect to
the web there's no there's no real encryption unless you're connected to a
website that supports HTTP so let's say that you were just sending an email
between Gmail and some other provider that isn't
Gmail and that would just be sent as plain text so what the what the VPN does
is effectively encrypts your connection from your from your device whichever
device you happen to be using to the VPN server and that means that between those
two points it's completely encrypted and anyone who was able to even hack into
that which is pretty much impossible would only see gibberish okay so there's
a bit of a culture here around and something to maybe explain about the
idea of hackers and who hackers are and what they want with your data
and I suppose there's also feeds into the whole idea of nothing to hide then I
don't need a VPN or whatever it's not really about hiding what you're doing
because you doing something illegal it's more about protecting what you were
already doing because otherwise people can look at it for instance in an open
Wi-Fi network situations yeah exactly so if you're if you're at the airport
and you just want to you know get online and do various things you're going to be
using a an open Wi-Fi so what that means is you can connect to the Wi-Fi network
there's no password that means that it's not encrypted because when you're
connected to a Wi-Fi network which uses a password that connection is then
encrypted right whereas on on public Wi-Fi which tip typically isn't it
doesn't have a password I didn't therefore not encrypted anything you do
which isn't so let's say that you're using your banking app that would be
encrypted okay cause that's a separate application has encryption exactly so it
has built encryption built in it has two factor authentication things like that
so there's no real benefit to using a VPN even over a public Wi-Fi because
your your banking app makes sure that all of that is safe but most apps they
will not have that kind of encryption so it's more that risk of say having your
password email address details like that stolen through just you using a normal
website you login through or some app you use for something totally mundane
nicely they have some of your private data yes that's probably just tied to
your account setup it exactly I think yeah definitely is worth bringing up I
think of some of these cases as well you said like an airport something but I
think we probably connect to open Wi-Fi more than we realize yeah it we always
I'm guilty of it as well not thinking about the privacy implications of
logging on to a network you just go down the line particularly when you're in
like a public place we're opposite the British Library
actually our offices and if you walk over there I you see British Library
free Wi-Fi and you click on it and you just connect to it it's quite easy for
people technically just set up a Wi-Fi network to trick people into connecting
or even for people like site just to hack that Wi-Fi network because it's
open it's do your data so people like really maybe think they're not affected
by this or thing but if you go connect to the Wi-Fi or McDonald's then you are
exactly yes it's the same wherever you are and you may not necessarily be
thinking about which apps are communicating with your personal data in
the background yeah so it's always worth just having that VPN app on your phone
you just connect to a server that's nearby so you know whichever is the
fastest one and it won't affect your connection speed you won't even notice
it it just runs in the background and you know so when you use a VPN is it
correct to say that your internet service provider legally and normally is
the only one who's gonna be looking or not looking but could technically see
what websites you've been on because if you can stop anyone else looking
certainly your your ISP can see which websites you visited it's unlikely that
anyone else would unless they were hacking into your connection on a Wi-Fi
yeah but if you if you if you don't want websites to track you if you don't want
your ISP to know where you've been then a VPN is obviously a very good idea
because it will stop your ISP seeing who you are what you're doing effectively
you're totally anonymous okay so we touched a little there upon the Y and
also a little bit upon the technical side of things so without getting too
into the weeds don't worry everyone Jim I could you just talk us through exactly
how a VPN works I know you did briefly explain it but you're talking about
endpoints and the data in the middle and where is where does the your average
person including us sit in that diagram and yeah some of the more technical
things so how it works it's reasonably simple you've got the app on your phone
and it uses it tends to use the VPN settings that's already built into your
phones at iOS Android Windows Mac OS all those devices they already have VPN
settings so what the app does is to put your your account details because you
have to have an account use a VPN so generally a paid-for service generally a
paid-for service yes and what happens is when you connect to a VPN server it will
create an encrypted connection between your device
and their server wherever that that's the key thing right that we need to put
cross here that encryption isn't default or so it is when you use VPN by default
most of the time unless with with a few exceptions your connection to a website
is not encrypted got it that's correct so anyone who's able to hack into that
connection can basically see anything that centers plaintext and depending on
how the website is set up your your password may be sent as plain text yeah
and if you're one of these people who use is the same password for every
website then you're probably gonna find that sooner or later someone's going to
be able to hack that password find it out and then just try your email address
and that password in various different services and websites and then you know
potentially some some personal details could be compromised and that's why I
think it's an important point that it's often it's not the things like your
banking out they have to worry about it's just gonna be your sort of like
fitness tracking app or something that someone then gets your password through
but then that lets them get into your actually email or Facebook or Twitter
you know that stuff that maybe you came on yeah full backdoor to these things
like you might use delivery yeah order a pizza when you're hungover but then
someone goes in the back door and is they got your card details yeah there
are there are certainly risks and I've been using a VPN just happening that VPN
running on your phone when you need it or running at home again when you need
it we'll get into that it just adds that layer of protection so you don't have to
think about it yeah and it's also more and more now I mean I remember when I
first started using a VPN it was just a computer thing you had on your desktop
your laptop and that was it but you already mentioned there's a lot of time
phone apps now but even like a lot of the big VPN providers now having an app
for your Xbox or like games consoles yeah you know all sorts of devices that
you might used to connect they're actually like spreading up more and more
types of app support so that you really can have this across everything you
might use to connect one more point before we move on oh is it true than not
all VPNs are created equal so there'll be different levels of services from
different companies of different reputation so what should people look
out for what the base was table stakes with VPNs because obviously you have
different features sure people
things that you would need to look out for you'd need to look out for somebody
of service which has plenty of servers because you might want to connect to
servers in different countries right we'll come to that in a little bit you
talk about unblocking you'll need some company who has ideally no logs policy
which means that they don't keep any connection records of when you connected
how long you are connected for and ideally that they're not based in one of
what we call the fourteen eyes we're not we Co want what are called the fourteen
eyes and they're 14 countries which essentially can share information with
each other and they're also they tend to be in jurisdictions where they could be
compelled to handover user data to the authorities which means that if you
happen to be doing something that you shouldn't have been if you choose a VPN
provider which is based outside of those countries that means that they have no
one they have no reason to hand over that data so your again your more secure
so there's an that information that you just shared with everyone that they
company that you go for should be upfront about these things right
otherwise yeah absolutely and ideally they should own and operate their own
servers so they've got full control over the whole chain and I suppose the final
thing is just to look for a service which has fast service because the one
thing you don't want to compromise on is your internet speed yeah because I'm not
in all cases but VPNs generally speaking will slow down your connection slightly
right because of the extra an extra step yeah exactly yes
but hopefully you shouldn't notice that yeah and I mean that's all really the
kind of thing where really you have to start looking at reviews because
companies will tout whatever speeds they want all the time yeah and
often you know you'll get a free trial so you can test that service yeah it
might be that you still have to sign up at the beginning but you get your money
back after 30 days or whatever yeah so um and you can you can give it a good
try and see if it's good if it's okay for your needs and on that note of free
trials maybe it's worth quickly going over we kind of talking there about paid
VPNs there are free ones out there yeah are they any good what why should you
pay for one if there's a free one exactly we don't recognize we don't
recommend using a free be VPN because if the product is free then you tend to be
you are brother you are the product which means that
aside from the fact that it's hard to trust that your date is going to be
completely secure and then you're you know it won't be sold on third parties
what you'll often find is that with a free service it's as simple as there's
hardly any choice of servers you tend to be restricted on bandwidth which means
that you you may not even be able to watch you know two or three hours of
video before you've used up all your bandwidth and finally the speeds may not
be as good as paid for services and at the end of the day if you don't trust
that the free one is keeping your data entirely safe then you're missing a big
chunk of the point of using in the third place the whole point of a VPN is that
you should be able to trust all of your yeah that you are properly anonymous and
secure this makes sense okay thank you we will move on in a moment to talk a
bit more about why you would use one what you'd use it for Netflix basically
but we'll explain why that is and why you can do it under the galaxy behind
that as well but before I do this episode of digital defenders is actually
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Netflix most people are probably gonna be thinking about something like that a
service not necessarily that that has Gio blocked content yeah we need to step
back a bit and have a think about it because am i ryan saying it's not
illegal to use a VPN to view geo restricted content that is correct it is
not a criminal offence in most countries to actually break the Terms and
Conditions of Netflix or Amazon or whoever but that's the key right is you
are breaking their Terms of Service yes yes if you read the Terms of Service
you'll often find that they will say you're not allowed to access the service
using your account in a different region but and of course it's all about rights
isn't it so they have rights to offer certain shows and in certain regions and
they don't have those rights to show them elsewhere so
essentially is breaking copyright and you're kind of abusing the service by
doing so yeah however a VPN makes it possible so if you want to watch
something that's only available on Netflix us you can log into your UK
Netflix account connect to a u.s. server on your VPN
provider and assuming that it supports Netflix yeah then you will be able to
then watch whatever show you want that's available in the US so on that Terms of
Service point what are the risks to breaking Netflix is Terms of Service
like is there any way that can backfire on you
in theory the risk is very low because you're paying Netflix for the service
and they obviously want your subscription yeah I don't I'm not aware
of anyone who's had their account terminated because they were found to be
using a VPN to to break the terms sir but by breaking the Terms of Service the
resource saying here that the biggest risk you put yourself in is that your
Netflix account will be closed down pretty much it's not actually an illegal
thing that you're doing I'm gonna come knocking I'm gonna get arrested because
it's slightly different from the revolving back a few years now but you
know torrenting when I was huge Pirate Bay and Napster things like that that
was different because you were downloading things that had copyright
that you weren't paying a service to legally use and then you were
distributing them to your peers that's illegal right correct no that was
difficult to track people were made examples of some people were put in jail
you know not many but this is different to that isn't it and to be fair a lot of
VPN services do support P to P which is Tauron things right they all have
specific service that are optimized for p2p so that's where it gets a bit murky
there are legitimate uses of yes you know isn't necessarily why most people
use them but like that is legit tech that it's be genuine you could be
downloading a torrent file for some software which you have paid for yeah
yeah and it's hard to think of why you would want to use VPN whilst doing that
because there's no legitimate reason why you should need a VPN just to download
some software for example but yes people do use it to download videos and
software they use a VPN so they can hide their activity and there are other
reasons aside from being a bit sneaky with Terms of Service that you might
wanna use a VPN as well right for example
would it be the case that if you were accessing the UK server for your emails
for work when you go abroad you might need to connect to a UK VPN I know my
dad uses a VPN for his work so they can connect to UK servers back home and
that's just legitimately so he can do some work yes I mean a lot of companies
will require you to still use the VPN and that would be more of a corporate
thing to lose your consumer VP and they say we were starting your own business
and you needed to do something like that then a consumer VPN is an option yeah
definitely and of course the one thing that we haven't talked about is just
simply unblocking websites which aren't available in certain countries yeah and
so of course we are specifically talking about the Western world here yeah but a
VPN will apply wherever you are in the world let's say that you go on holiday
to holiday to you know maybe you are on holiday but let's say that you go to
China yeah you'll find that you can't access Google you can't access a lot of
the web annual you'll need to use your VPN so that you can unlock the web for
yourself yeah and there are other people in other countries who want to avoid
oppressive regimes who don't want you reading a lot of the internet a VPN
hides your activity and it unblocks websites and on that same sort of note
of accessing stuff you just cannot access otherwise but going back to the
delight of the entertainment angle is it can be about accessing rather than just
being like oh when I accessed US Netflix from my UK account it might be the you
wanna watch a Hulu show yeah that's not being picked up by a UK
channel yet so Hulu is us only you could make an account pay for it through the
u.s. you'll need the VPN to access it exact on the flip side someone from
outside the UK might want to watch the BBC iPlayer which you have to be in UK
for completely or equally you know if you're on holiday but you want to watch
an AI player show like you might want to use a VPN on your laptop or some things
that you can watch that BBC's right you've paid for your licence fee that
the BBC will say but you know is actually a rights thing that you can't
watch it outside of the UK but you may feel like well I'm just on holiday I've
paid my TV license I want to watch the latest episode of Top Gear or whatever
it is VPN which has a UK server and supports I play it will allow you to do
that so that's something to think about when you're looking for a VPN if you
want to use it for a specific service in a specific country to do specific things
do check whether or not it can do and usually I would kind of suggest to look
at as Don and Jim suggested editorial reviews
have a lot of them on tech advisor ourselves even though we do get sponsors
to do things like this this is editorial content that we're doing so we go
through different VPNs and we actually tell you what they do because the cheap
one might actually get you Netflix yeah so what actually does well just I will
give know what that one he can do that but there are many others to do it as
well a different prices for different people so don't just pick the first one
you see have a bit of research so before we wrap up anything else you wanted it
to add guys I actually one thing about saying if anyone who has tried to use a
VPN before to watch a Netflix or stuff like that will probably have experienced
that phenomena of it just not working yeah so what is going on when you try
and use a VPN you select the US server you go to Netflix and it still says no
this won't work what's happening it does that is
unfortunately it's a common thing it's as simple as just retrying
you can retry it using the flame server you'll often find that it works you
could retry using a different server you'll often find that it works it's a
common problem across all VPNs Netflix is of course like BBC iPlayer and other
streaming services there they're blocking those VPN servers as soon as
they can find them as soon as they say what they're doing they're shutting
blocking those IP addresses basically so VPNs just have to get new new IP
addresses and then they're up and running again so just keep trying to try
their tech support as well they'll often point you to the right server because
they don't want to advertise which server works would be services because
then yeah be easily shut down so yeah Toby you're paying for this service
exactly so okay Don Jim thanks that's been a first episode of Digital
defenders we'll have some more in the pipeline and thanks for watching
you