Hi there,
my name is
Lorna Li, and
I'm the host of
Entrepreneurs for a Change,
a web show about evolutionary entrepreneurs who are changing
the world and designing the lifestyles of their dreams. Today we're exploring the art of
lifestyle business travel.
The topic of the day is why you should be using a VPN service.
A VPN is essentially a Virtual Private Network; what it does is it creates
an encrypted tunnel through which your data can pass. This adds an additional
layer of protection for anything that you may be doing that involves passing
sensitive personal information through the Internet.
If you're a long-term business traveler, chances are public WiFi cafés and
your hotel Internet service are your lifeline to the world and to your
business. The problem is hotel Internet connections and public WiFi café
connections tend to be insecure; hackers love to target these public Internet
access points, and the administrators of these networks are not really on top
of the Internet security game. I know this because it's been a year since
I've come back to Chiang Mai, Thailand, and a lot of the WiFi cafés that I am
working from have the same exact password that they were using one year ago.
If you're a long-term business traveler, at some point you're going to have to
access your online banking, your online credit card accounts,
or pay your contractors online, and if you need to do that while
connected to a hotel network or a public WiFi café connection, then you definitely should be
using a VPN service.
Another reason to use a VPN service is if you need to activate your
credit or debit cards overseas using a Google Voice number;
Google Voice only happens to work from the US, Canada, and a handful of other countries, so if you
happen to be based in a country that's not on that list, and you want to
access Google Voice from your computer, it won't work, so you're going to
have to use your VPN service and connect to a US-based IP... and trick Google
into thinking you are based in the United States.
In a similar way, a VPN is also really useful if you have to access
a service that might have its security settings triggered by your
offshore IP address, for example, Paypal. If you connect with
a US-based IP then you decrease the likelihood of getting locked out of that service.
Another way a VPN is useful is if you want to access some type
of streaming media site like Hulu or Amazon Prime that only works
in a certain list of countries, then you can also trick that service
into thinking that you arewatching a movie from a country that is included in their list.
If you are an online marketer and want to see what Google search results look
like in specific regions then a VPN service is also really useful; so if I
wanted to look at Google search results in Sao Paulo, all I need to do is
connect with a Sao Paulo IP address. In the same way, if I want to see search
results in London, I can connect, using my VPN service, to a London-based IP
address.
So these are all the different ways a VPN service is extremely useful to a
long-term business traveler. That's it for today - thank you so much for
joining me, and for more lifestyle business travel tips, please go to
entrepreneursforachange.com