If you’ve spent any amount of time on the internet, you’ve at least heard of a VPN, or Virtual Private Network. They offer greater online privacy, safer browsing, or the ability to access websites and streaming services only offered to other countries. I knew that much. I’ve personally used a VPN before, but never really understood how it works.
As I develop new story ideas, I begin with the basics: research. When there’s something technical or unfamiliar I need to know, I look into it. One of those unfamiliar topics is Cybersecurity. Hopefully the research doesn’t alert the FBI agent assigned to me (every writer has one, you know).
A VPN is a way to create an encrypted (I’ll be researching more about that, too) connection between your device and a remote server. A typical visit to a website means:
Your device → Website (like keriwriter.com), routed through your ISP (Cox, Comcast, etc.), which gives your device a specific address that identifies it everywhere.
With a VPN it means:
Your device→VPN→Website (https://keriwriter.com/product/midnight-splash-signed-copy/)
VPNs allow you to sit at home in the US and access your favorite British TV shows directly on the British streaming service by substituting a British address, but they’re for more than masking your address to watch a little television. They offer privacy and security a single connection can’t, making sensitive data (think credit card numbers, passwords, business data) harder to obtain.
Another but: they don’t make you invisible. While your internet service provider might not be able to see what you're doing through the encrypted connection, the VPN provider may have access to some of that information.
My biggest discovery: you can use more than one! Your internet traffic can travel through a single server, or it can pass through several in different countries before reaching its destination – in a matter of seconds. You could connect to a VPN server in Michigan, then, if the service supports multiple “hops,” route your connection through Canada, Switzerland, and Singapore before landing in England. The end website logs your IP address as being in England.
Imagine trying to trace that connection back to the person sitting in Michigan! It's not impossible, but it's more complicated than looking up a single IP address. Plus, depending on the VPN services involved, some of the information needed to trace the connection might not even exist anymore.
I'm not sure how much of this research will actually find its way into a novel for you to read. It’s definitely informing my writing. And I've probably given my FBI agent another reason to keep an eye on my search history.
Did you know this about VPNs? Do you use VPNs? Let’s talk on Facebook!