Fast and Secure VPN on a Budget? Private Internet Access VPN Has You Covered

Back when the internet consisted of a handful of computers
networked together across a few research institutions, nobody could
have imagined that it would one day form the backbone of a new
digital way of life. And that probably explains why none of the
researchers who thought up its core technologies — things like
packet switching and TCP/IP — gave much consideration to the need
to secure the data passing through it.

But by 1989, hackers like Robert Morris had already spotted the
security weaknesses of the fledgling global network and started to
exploit them. And that was just the beginning. Today, network
administrators and individual internet users spend significant
amounts of time and money trying to keep their data safe from
prying eyes.

The de-facto tool most people use for that purpose is a VPN.
It’s a software encryption solution that prevents anyone from
accessing data traversing the public internet other than its
intended recipient. And VPNs make up a data privacy market that’s
already worth an estimated $41 billion worldwide. But VPNs aren’t
just all about security. Some, like Private Internet Access (PIA)^[1], are expanding their
ability to provide location shifting and creating a whole new
reason for users to turn to VPNs.

Here’s an overview of the data privacy benefits of today’s
commercial VPN services and how PIA is elevating location shifting
into the next must-have VPN feature.

VPNs Offer Point-to-Point Encryption and Anonymity

The core purpose of a VPN is to encrypt data as it passes
through the networks that make up the internet. But they weren’t
necessarily intended for use as an internet privacy tool — at least
not at first. At first, businesses used VPNs as a way to offer
employees secure remote access to protected business networks while
they worked from home or on the road.

The idea was simple. The user’s PC would encrypt all network
traffic using a key that only it, and the business network
destination, had. Plus, the business’s network firewall would only
allow external traffic in if it came from an authorized remote VPN
connection.

In recent years, however, commercial VPN providers have used the
technology differently. Instead of using protected networks as
endpoints, they set up geographically dispersed endpoint servers
for users to connect to. By aggregating user traffic through those
endpoints, the providers could offer users a measure of anonymity,
plus the protection of in-transit data encryption.

That would mean nobody could access or read a commercial VPN
user’s internet traffic until it exited the VPN provider’s
endpoint. But because hundreds or thousands of users could be using
the same endpoint for data egress — it would be all but impossible
to connect any specific data back to its origin. And that’s what
makes them such a great tool for individual internet users trying
to safeguard their privacy online.

Location Shifting as a Value-added Benefit

Although the privacy aspect of commercial VPNs is their main
selling point, it’s not the only one. Providers like Private Internet Access^[2]
(PIA) have started to lean into the fact that there are other
benefits to using VPNs that end users are more than willing to pay
for. One of those benefits is known as location shifting. But to
understand that, some background information is necessary.

On the internet, every connected device has a unique numerical
or alphanumeric address — an IP address — that identifies it to
other devices. Those addresses are how data gets from one point to
another across the internet. But that’s not all they do these days.
Today, major websites and services use those addresses to deduce an
end user’s location. And that lets them create geo-restrictions to
govern which regions can access which content.

But for VPN users, it’s possible to shift locations by
connecting to an endpoint server in a desired part of the world. To
the aforementioned sites and services, it’s the endpoint server’s
location that shows up, not the user’s true location. That means a
VPN user can make their traffic appear to originate from anywhere
their provider has an endpoint server.

PIA, for their part, recognizes what a big deal that is. So
they’ve set up endpoint servers in all 50 US states — and 84
countries in total — for their users to choose from. That means
PIA’s users can use the service to access region-specific content
and geo-restricted sites all over the globe. They can, for
example:

• Evade sports streaming blackouts to watch their favourite team
  from wherever they wish
• Access content from local news stations that aren’t available
  from outside their coverage area
• Access region-specific streaming libraries from companies like
  Netflix, Prime Video, HBO, Hulu, and others
• Watch broadcast television content early by shifting time
  zones
• Access location-specific product discounts and other deals

In other words — Private Internet Access^[3]
offers users a variety of benefits through location shifting that’s
well worth the price of admission. And although they’re not the
only provider to do this, they have the most extensive set of US
endpoint servers and a global endpoint network that’s
second-to-none. That means users who value the ability to location
shift online now have a new ally that’s serious about giving them
maximum flexibility.

The Continued Evolution of VPN Technology

The main takeaway here is that today’s VPN services play a big
role in giving internet users a means of retaining their privacy
and protecting their data online. But as the years go by,
innovators like PIA are evolving the technology to cater to some
additional use cases beyond simple security. And location shifting
is just one example of it. PIA, for example, also offers ad and
malware blocking, support for next-gen VPN protocols like
WireGuard, and split-tunneling support. Together, those features
are quite close to making VPNs a must-have for every internet user
out there — and there’s every reason to believe that those won’t be
the last innovations we’ll see in the market in the weeks, months,
and years to come.