Can VPN Protect Our Online Privacy?

The Internet has had a huge impact on the daily work and leisure of millions of people. For many people, the Internet has become an immovable part of their lives, and they rely on it. From mailing addresses to passwords to credit card numbers, there is a huge amount of personal data on the Internet. This is a huge hidden danger, because all these data are of inestimable value. Everyone from individuals to companies and even governments will spare no effort to obtain it, no matter the purpose is good or bad. Therefore, along with the development of the Internet, data privacy issues have grown rapidly in the past two decades, and although many companies try their best to protect this data, this is not always sufficient. Internet privacy has become one of the biggest technical problems of our time, and some measures need to be taken in this regard. Research is needed to find a cheap but effective solution to online privacy issues. But before conducting research, one must know what the potential solution to this problem is.

Hiding personal information on the Internet is not easy, and the fact that companies such as Google share it directly with advertisers makes this even more difficult. (Cyphers, 2020). However, this is not impossible. In fact, there are many information protection methods, if research, investment and standardization can solve the problem of information loss to a large extent. Many people have heard of one method, but not many people use or understand it, that is VPN (virtual private network).VPN is a private network that provides encrypted connections to public places on the Internet (Norton, 2021). Although they can also be used to access blocked sites, their most popular feature is to protect private data by sending private data over a particularly secure connection. Currently, only 31% of Internet users worldwide have used VPN (Vojinovic, 2021). However, if the use of VPN is standardized, it will greatly help protect Internet privacy. But the problem is that it is one thing to say that VPNs should be standardized, but it is another thing to actually invest resources and efforts to achieve this goal. In addition to the free trial, each VPN service requires money to use. In addition, the amount of money required to pay for the services of VPN companies for all users will be so astronomical that no organization on the planet can afford it. So the question is: how to make VPNs more affordable while maintaining security?

According to NordVPN, the working principle of VPN is to create a secure encrypted tunnel through the Internet, and ensure the security of each data packet by wrapping each data packet in an encrypted external data packet (NordVPN, 2015). However, one problem with this approach is that it limits how much data the VPN can protect at any given time. To solve this problem, we can test the feasibility of bundling multiple data packets together and sending them simultaneously through the VPN service. Data packets can be marked with source and destination, placed in an external encrypted package, sent through a secure VPN tunnel, and then unpacked and distributed to where they belong. Since personal data packets will still be sent through an encrypted tunnel, security will be maintained.

At the same time, the capabilities of VPN companies will change because they will be able to handle large amounts of data-due to market competition-which will prompt them to charge lower prices for services. As technology advances and these companies grow, their prices will begin to fall. Eventually, VPN services will become so cheap that VPN companies cooperate with electronic equipment manufacturers to calculate the total service cost during the expected life of the equipment and include that cost. It will be more convenient instead of paying monthly in the original Buying, thus making it more convenient for consumers. I think VPN will become the standard for almost all devices in less than two decades, thus creating a safer and more private Internet for people to explore.

In the past two decades, Internet privacy has become one of the biggest technical problems we face, and it will only continue to grow in the future. A large amount of personal information is stored on the Internet. Hackers try to obtain this information. Companies openly share this information. It seems impossible to keep private information confidential. And VPN is an effective method to solve it. By packaging multiple data packets in an encrypted cover to improve the VPN function, VPN can be standardized, and can protect the privacy of millions of people.

References

Cyphers, B. (2020, March 19). Google says it doesn't 'sell' your data. Here's how the company shares, monetizes, and exploits it. Electronic Frontier Foundation.

NordVPN. (2015, October 21). VPN 101: What does it do? NordVPN.

Richards, C. (2020, December 22). How often should you buy a new computer? CCleaner. https://www.ccleaner.com/knowledge/how-often-should-you-buy-a-new-computer

Vojinovic, I. (2021, March 21). VPN Statistics for 2021 – Keeping Your Browsing Habits Private. DataProt.

Information from Stanford Advanced Materials.