How to Set Up and Use a VPN

How to Set Up and Use a VPN

A VPN is one of the simplest ways to protect your privacy online. Buying and installing a VPN app is easy, so you've got no excuse.

Whether you're connecting to the internet on a computer or a smartphone, you should use a virtual private network or VPN. That might sound paranoid, but there are real threats out there, and they're only getting worse.

On Wi-Fi networks, unscrupulous individuals can attempt to intercept your information. Whenever you connect to the internet, your internet service provider (ISP) has access to everything you send and has been given the green light from Congress to sell your anonymized information to advertisers, too.

Out on the wide-open internet, advertisers and spies can track your movements between websites and discern your location by peeking at your IP address. It's scary out there.

The fact is the internet was created for easy information exchange, not user privacy, anonymization, or encrypted communication. While HTTPS goes a long way toward protecting your information, it doesn't guard against ISP snooping or local network attacks—a major problem if you ever use a connection that isn't yours, such as one at a hotel or a coffee shop.

So until a new, more private internet comes together (probably never), using a VPN is the easiest way to make sure that you're sharing as little information as possible.

Getting Started With a VPN

Once you've settled on a service, the first thing to do is to download the company's app.

There's usually a downloads page for this on the VPN service's website. Go ahead and download the apps for your mobile devices as well; you'll want to protect as many of your devices as you can. Generally, you pay one subscription fee for a certain number of licenses (usually five) and then you can use the service on any device for which it provides apps.

If the VPN service you're considering doesn't offer an app for the devices you use, consider finding another one.

Once you've installed the apps, you're prompted to enter your login information. In most cases, this is the username and password you created when you signed up for the service.

Once you're logged in, your VPN app usually connects to the VPN server closest to your current location. That's done to provide better speeds, as performance degrades the farther the VPN server is from your actual location. That's it: Your information is now being securely tunneled to the VPN server.

Note that you do not have to install the VPN company's app. Instead, you can configure your device's network settings to connect directly to the VPN service. If you're concerned about the potential for surveillance within app ecosystems, this might be a good option for you. Most VPN services will have documentation on how to configure your device. We discourage most users from going down this path, however.

Manual configuration means you'll have to manually update the server information on your computer, which is annoying. You also won't be able to access any of the other features provided by the VPN service, which you're already paying for.

Sometimes you might not want to be connected to the server the VPN app recommends. Perhaps you want to spoof your location, use BitTorrent via VPN, or you want to take advantage of some of the custom servers your VPN company has provided, or maybe the nearest server just doesn't work well.

Many VPN companies include an interactive map as part of their app. NordVPN, for example, lets you click on countries to connect to those servers. It's a useful way to understand where your information is going, but there's probably a list of servers you can select from.

Choosing a server depends entirely on what you want to accomplish. For better speeds, you should choose a nearby server. To bypass government censorship, choose a server in a country different from your own.

Some VPNs include options to automate this process. To access region-locked content, you'll want a server that's local to content you want to watch. If you're trying to watch the BBC, you'll want to tunnel to the UK.

Some VPN companies have specialized servers for streaming video.

It's also a good idea to check and see whether your VPN service allows BitTorrent traffic on any server, or just specific ones.

If you've opted to ignore first-party apps and configure your network settings manually, you will probably have to enter the information for each VPN server individually. This is time-consuming and part of why we advise against manual configuration whenever possible.

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