Why is a VPN for Australia important?
There are several reasons why it’s important to have a VPN in general, not just in Australia. First of all, as we already mentioned, it’s important for your privacy. This should be a real fundamental right, just like it is in real life. But since the governments don’t seem to really care about this, it is up to us to protect ourselves. A VPN is usually the best option here. This is because a VPN acts as a mask for you. Everything you do online goes through a VPN first and because of that, your IP address always appears to be part of the VPN’s server. Without a VPN, your IP is easily visible to all sites you visit, to the government, and to any individual with just a little bit of knowledge on how all of this works. With a VPN, your IP will not be visible, and thus, your online activity won’t be traced back to you.
Furthermore, this privacy means that advertisers won’t be able to target you with specific ads that are customized to you because they won’t be able to track you and surmise data on you. Ads might be a nuisance to most and ultimately harmless, but too many advertisers use psychology and any method available to them to get you to buy. Sometimes, you won’t even notice that it was actually an ad that got you to buy something and not you yourself.
Another important reason is to get around censorship and blocks. In Australia, sites like PirateBay are blocked, and many other peer-to-peer file sharing sites. With a VPN, you will be able to get around this as you will be able to appear to be from another country. This is also very useful in Australia for Netflix because it has less content than US Netflix. With a good-enough VPN, you will be able to use the American version of Netflix.
US Netflix is not the only site you will be able to use. With the ability to appear in any other country, using most such sites will be easy. Also, by being able to appear in any other country, it will be much easier for you to use any file sharing site online and get what you need easily.
Since a VPN can be installed on most devices, it will be useful to safely use public WiFi hotspots. You would be surprised how easy it is for anyone with a little bit of knowledge and skill, to intercept any of the data that passes between you and any site over a public WiFi.
How to use a VPN in Australia
As with basically anything online nowadays, VPNs are very easy to use and are pretty much self-explanatory. Each is specific and has their own method, so you will have to see for yourself when you get one. If it happens that there’s something you don’t know how to do, the site will certainly have a help section for you to check. If not that, most VPNs have a customer support service that will gladly assist you with that.
The important thing to mention here, if you want to use an effective VPN, is that you will have to pay for one. There are plenty of free VPNs which you can use, but they will rarely be effective enough. Especially when it comes to properly hide your IP, accessing and using sites like US Netflix and US Hulu, etc. You have to understand, it’s not easy to provide a VPN service, there’s always a team of people who create and maintain these, and they need money for that. And as always, servers are needed, which is especially true and important with VPNs. As you can see, such a thing doesn’t come for free. The bright side here is that all VPNs that want to charge you, don’t charge much, it’s usually on a monthly basis and only a couple of dollars, which is more than affordable.
Key Australia VPN Questions and Answers
- Are VPNs legal? Are they legal in Australia? Yes and yes. VPNs are legal almost everywhere in the world. The only thing that might not be legal is what you decide to use a VPN on. But since most VPNs don’t even allow you to do anything illegal with their service, you have nothing to fear here. And as always, it’s the services themselves that are prosecuted for something they’re doing that might be illegal, not the users. What’s more, there are basically no countries in the world that actually prosecute people for using a VPN. Only the United Arab Emirates have a law that criminalizes VPN users, but even there, it’s unclear how and if this really works as it sounds.
- Do I still need an ISP when I’m using a VPN? Definitely yes. A VPN cannot provide you with a connection, it only shields your activity online. You will still have to pay your ISP in order to have Internet at all.
- I’ve heard about something called a “kill switch” on VPNs. What is that? A kill switch is a feature most VPNs have. When a VPN losses connection (and yes, as with anything, it has to happen from time to time), you become vulnerable and unprotected by your VPN. In such cases, a kill switch instantly activates and makes it so that you cannot access the Internet until the connection to the VPN server has been restored.
- Does a VPN slow down my Internet connection? Unfortunately yes. Fortunately, it slows it down very little, it’s practically unnoticeable. It depends on each VPN service how much they slow down your connection. Some are effective in making it unnoticeable, and some are not. But even the smallest lags are necessary due to the nature of VPNs themselves. Because data has to pass between a VPN server in addition to everything else it does, it has to take more time to do it.
- Since my data and activity passes through VPNs servers, should I worry that they themselves can threaten my privacy? Technically they can, just like your ISP can. But this doesn’t mean that they do as that would defeat their purpose. Some VPNs store your data for a short while, but they never do anything with it. Even storing data is rare with VPNs. They have no reason to do this, as they make money from not doing that.
- Can I use a VPN on my other devices, like my phone? Yes, absolutely. Most good VPNs offer you the ability to use their apps on any device, smartphones included. Depending on the specific service, a VPN will offer you apps for 5 or more devices on a single subscription.
Things to look for before buying a VPN
Even though the next section will give you a review of the best VPNs to get, we still wanted to point out some of the more important things to look for before you buy a VPN.
- Support for OpenVPN. Every VPN uses a specific protocol to connect and to encrypt your data, and since the industry’s standard is OpenVPN, you should make sure that the VPN you’re choosing also supports OpenVPN.
- No logs of your activity. Most VPNs don’t keep logs of your online activity, but there are some that do, at least for a little while. So if you don’t want this, you should make sure that your VPN of choice doesn’t keep logs.
- Make sure to see how much does the VPN limit your speed. The less, the better.
- Large enough amounts of data per month. Some VPNs can offer very little, so you should check this as well before you settle on one service.
- Australian servers. As you need a VPN in Australia, you are definitely located there, so it would be ideal for your VPN to have servers in Australia. This will help you a lot with ping, and there will be much less lag than there would be if the server was located somewhere far away.