In years past, the word "VPN" was dark and scary. It was a word that people associated with hackers and criminals rather than people like you and I. Today though, having a good VPN is essential for protecting your online privacy from being snooped on as well as being able to break through geo-locked services so you can surf like you do back home.
The folks over at Surfshark sent over some reasons why a VPN should be used while traveling, but we want to add a couple more to their list, so here we go!
Protect Your Internet Connection At Hotels and Public WiFi Hotspots
This is the single biggest reason why using a VPN is more than just a "nice thing to have". Unfortunately, there are bad people out there just waiting for you to give them access to your phone, tablet, or laptop. It's WAY EASIER than you'd think and I've even done some testing to see what would happen if I decided to look around myself. It happened to me, and there is nothing special about my situation that would keep it from happening to you.
Simply put, when you are connecting to a network that isn't your private one at home, everyone on that network can see everything else going on. On top of this, you don't know if the owner of that hotspot is doing something funky to track users and log keystrokes so they can steal your passwords and files. I had this happen on a cruise a couple of years ago and while things worked out ... I now use a VPN all the time when I'm traveling.
Access Audio and Video Streaming Away From Home
I'm not sure if you've ever noticed but when traveling internationally, certain services like Netflix will have content blocked based on where it thinks you are. That could be as basic as an airline reservation system showing you different prices or it could be that you can't stream your favorite show. While mobile devices can still report GPS coordinates most devices use the IP address to determine where you are. If you are at an internet cafe in Croatia then it will show you content allowed there.
Fire up the VPN and connect to a server in California and a lot of that goes back to normal. Be realistic about the streaming side of it, though. This worked far better a few years ago than it does today, because the major streaming services have spent real money on detecting VPN traffic and Netflix in particular now falls back to its globally licensed catalog when it spots one. Smaller services and regional broadcasters are a different story and still work fine. If watching from abroad is the main thing you are buying a VPN for, that is worth understanding before you pay for a year.
Access Websites Being Blocked Based On Your Location
Streaming and entertainment isn't the only content that is blocked by location. While most of us aren't traveling to countries where websites and services are blocked, this is important for some of us. By using a VPN in a country that censors the Internet, you can maintain proper access to your favorite sites. However, do be aware that this might be breaking local laws so check that out before using it and be discrete if you think there might be an issue.
The catch is that the countries most likely to block sites are also the most likely to block VPN traffic itself. If that describes where you are headed, the feature to look for is obfuscation, sometimes sold as a stealth or camouflage mode, which disguises the tunnel as ordinary encrypted web traffic. A service without it may simply fail to connect once you land, which is a bad time to find out.
Access Websites Blocked Based On Content Filters
Countries aren't the only entities blocking sites. Sometimes it's as simple as a library or restaurant enabling a child-safe filter. I'm certainly not advocating that you look at "adult content", some of these content filters block medical content and other topics that it thinks might be unsafe. By using a VPN though, you can usually bypass these blocks and browse whatever sites you need.
Avoid Tracking Cookies, Ads, and Malware
Most computers and even mobile devices have some sort of malware protection but one thing I like about some VPN services is that they can help block those before it even gets to your device. Just like with many things in life, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Be clear on what that is doing, because the encryption is not the part that protects you here. The tunnel keeps other people on the network from reading your traffic. The blocking is a separate feature, a maintained list of domains and addresses known to serve ads and malware, and not every service includes one. It is also worth knowing where a VPN stops helping altogether, because it does not clear cookies or log you out of anything.
Whatever VPN you choose, make sure to look at all the features and speed ratings. While some are more advanced (and costly) with high-level anonymity, that often comes with a price as far as the speed and latency. Instead, look for wording that the VPN has been tuned for use with streaming services, has apps for both mobile, desktop, and even game systems, and how many devices you can use at the same time. For instance, your fancy new VPN isn't going to protect you if you fire it up and discover that only your laptop is connected by your phone and tablet are waiting to be hacked into!
If you want the long version of that comparison, I have gone through the features that separate one travel VPN from another in more detail, and there are a handful of uses that have nothing to do with security at all.
Check The WiFi Package Before You Sail
One trap that catches people specifically on cruises: the cheapest onboard internet tiers do not always allow VPN connections at all. On a recent Norwegian sailing the basic package would not carry one, which is exactly backwards from what you want, since ship wifi is shared with a few thousand strangers and is the network where you would most like a tunnel.
Check the fine print on the package before you buy it, and if the cheap tier blocks VPN traffic, price out a cellular-at-sea plan instead. Your own cellular connection is encrypted on its own terms and sidesteps the shared network entirely.