Life has been going great. Then Avast tells me I need a VPN. Only $4/month.
Living under my rock, I never heard of VPN. But, thanks to Wiki, now I know.
Am I the only one without one?
If I need one, is $4/month a good deal?
If you’re engaged in any sort of questionably legal behavior anywhere from torrenting to child porn to buying drugs on the dark web, then definitely.
If you’re concerned that someone might discover your secret midget llama porn addiction, then probably.
If your time is spent on StraightDope and Amazon. Don’t bother.
If your entertainment is Netflix and Hulu. Definitely not. It will noticeably cause your connection to lag and you’ll spend even more time buffering or watching reduced resolution.
Okay. That was the overly simplistic, but still accurate answer.
What the avast VPN will try to do for you is to prevent malicious websites from gaining access to your PC.
If you’ve ever been browsing and gotten one of those ads that redirects you to a site that grabs your browser session to warn you that your PC is infected and to call this 800 number immediately, yada, yada, yada. That is the sort of thing they pre-filter for you. They’ll also catch spoof and phishing websites like the ones you get emails warning you your PayPal account has been hacked and click here to verify your identity. Hopefully you’re smart enough to hit delete on that.
There are a few more things they’ll cover, but you taking sensible precautions and having a good antivirus package should be plenty unless you are actually going to some of the skeevier sites that generate tons of popup and popunder advertising.
I installed a VPN last Fall. Works pretty well.
I did run into problems with sites like Amazon. It thought my login was suspicious. I ran into the same problem logging into an email account.
The solution is to turn off the VPN before going to those sites. Then turn it back on afterwards.
I didn’t have those problems using a VPN. They did treat me as if I were accessing the accounts from a new computer, so I had to input the password again and maybe answer an extra security question. For many of those sites I don’t store the password in the browser anyway, and if there’s an option to ask me an extra security question each time I make the site do that. If I do store the password, they might ask me to input the password again every 30 days or so.
There’s a few websites that will not let you access them using a VPN, however, or with TOR. As you mentioned, you can always turn the VPN off.
VPNs can be used to spoof your geographical location, so they can be (and commonly are) used to circumvent regional restrictions on video streaming. So sites like Netflix and Amazon will refuse to serve you if they detect you’re using a VPN. If you can stream from them while using a VPN, it means their VPN detection algorithm failed in your case. But they’re improving their algorithms continually, so you may find one day that you can no longer stream over the VPN.
Pay for both. Fuck it.
Amazon sent a security code by email. I had to enter it to complete my login.
I think it bothered them that my vpn showed me in a different part of the country. A customer from Arkansas has a login attempt from California.
Okay, accepting that I should use a VPN, does anyone have any recommendations? I get ads for them and I see some of them have annual fees and some have a single one-time payment for lifetime service. I assume if I looked around I could find some that are being offered for free.
Should I go with a pay VPN? Anything I should be looking for? Anything I should be looking to avoid? Any specific services people can recommend?
Is this a service of Avast? Because a normal VPN doesn’t do any of this for you. A normal VPN is simply an encrypted proxy.
You should not use a VPN. The use cases for a VPN are pretty niche and if you don’t definitely know you need a VPN, you probably don’t.
+1
There are only a few real reasons for using a VPN. For example, I use one to connect to my office network when I’m at home. A vague idea that it’s “safer” is not a reason to use a VPN. You’re just complicating and slowing down your network for no reason.
I do need a VPN. Board policy prohibits me from explaining why.
I travel with some regularity to China and Russia.
In China, if I want to have any semblance of reasonable internet use (heck, even if I just want to check my email) I need a VPN (or rather a set of them). My standard web communication tools are blocked there.
In Russia (from where I am posting right now) I need it to be able to access some of my web communication tools.
So, for people in my situation, VPNs are essential.
Either I’ve misunderstood you or you’ve misunderstood me. I wasn’t suggesting that a VPN could be used to access these services for free. I was saying that VPN would cause problems in using them.
According to a review I read at one time. It described them as effectively bundling a VPN and malware content filtering into one package. Their site doesn’t mention the filtering now so maybe they’ve split it out. Or I could just be misremembering.
In a nutshell. If you need VPN for work, your employer probably already has a VPN server set up.
About the only reason for the average person to use a VPN is if they frequently use public Wi-Fi that would be targets for someone to set up a fake access point.
You know you need a VPN, ergo, you need a VPN. I was responding to OP who had apparently just heard of VPNs for the first time via an ad and was wondering if they needed one, which they don’t.
Deleted by mod. Reason below once I get a spare moment.
I found out the hard way that you may be required to use a specific browser.
PIA VPN has a Chrome plug in and it works great on Android.
I was annoyed Firefox doesn’t have a plug-in. It’s forced me to use Chrome on my pc.
Otherwise, PIA works well. IIRC I bought a 2 year subscription. It was the best priced deal.
VPNs are useful when visiting new sites, especially those not based in the U.S. (which you probably would never know unless you checked the host company and registrar). Even fully legitimate sites will often track and log your location and surfing details (notice how local ads sometimes appear on the website).
Also, I like to follow some Asian news and sometimes get different search results and suggestions if I use a VPN to access the sites from an Asian IP address.
Most of the large VPN companies offer a free trial, so give it a try. If you do decide go with a paid VPN, keep an eye out for deals. There are lots of better deal than $4/month.
I use and recommend Windscribe. And Privateinternetaccess access is recommended by Linus Tech Tips, a highly reputable Youtuber.
Yes. Absolutely.
I often set my VPN to Europe. Then go to BBC News and see articles not aimed at US readers.
Set my VPN to London and I get more UK articles. Spain and Italy are good settings too.
One funny consequence. I sometimes get ads in foreign languages. 
That’s kind of cool.