Over recent years, VPN has gone from nerdy obscurity to a widely accepted tool for online anonymity and data encryption. The rise in demand has led to a broad range of available services, varying in speed, the strength of security, ease of use, and supported platforms.

Because being connected to the World Wide Web has become essential, we can't help but use the Internet on a daily basis. So, it's only natural for us to be concerned about our online privacy and whether or not the Internet Service Providers are spying on our activities.

VPNs (virtual private networks) are used by more and more people as they are now among the most trusted and reliable ways to secure our personal data and online privacy. Despite the fact that the use of virtual private networks is on the rise, there are still a lot of fascinating things that people don't know about these services. For example, not a lot of people know how to choose an optimal VPN provider. If you want to start using VPNs and you want to make a safe choice, check out this ExpressVPN review.

Cybercrimes can be described as computer-related crimes which occur over a network. The computers involved in these crimes are either used as a means of attack or are the target the crimes. As a result of this, these attacks can be used in a plethora of ways and can range from attacking chat rooms and database systems to individual social media accounts and web applications. This allows the scope of these attacks to be capable of crippling a nation as they pose a threat not only to individual people but also to a country's security and economy.

A smart home is a home connected through a network commonly referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT). This allows people to easily manage their appliances, thermostats, lightings and other smart IoT devices remotely using smart devices. The IoT functions by having devices similar to those in a normal everyday house except they carry some functionality to allow them to connect to a network for remote management. Some of the popular IoT devices include appliances, home security devices such as surveillance cameras, thermostats, smoke detectors to name a few, and more and more "things" will be available for smart home management.

A virtual private network (VPN) is a network technology used to extend two or more private networks over a public network (i.e. Internet). It accomplishes this by creating a secure connection between two endpoints where all of the data shared between these two are encrypted. This disallows a third-party from tampering with the data trespassing through the public network. It also means that the IP addresses of both devices on either side of the tunnel is secure from the public. This is because the IP address used on both endpoints are only used as internal IP, and they are assigned a new public IP address outside of the tunnel.

Spyware is a type of malware which monitors a person's system and steal user's sensitive information. While monitoring the system, the software will amass a plethora of information about the system and its users and then send them to another system with or without the users' consent. Because of this, it is typically used by nefarious actors to steal a person's information which can include their browsing habits as well as their sensitive private information. In some cases, spyware have also been known to redirect a user's browsing or to seal them off from certain files.

Adware is a form of malware which displays advertisement on user's screen with (or in most cases without user's consent) for the benefit of creator. Sometimes, a user's search request is redirected to an advertising website based on the marketing data stored on a user's computer. The creator gets paid for redirecting or referring traffic to advertising website on a pay-per-click basis. This has led to adware becoming quite intrusive on numerous websites and applications in a constant attempt for its developers to benefit from it. These methods included having a banner, video, pop-up, static box, or any other container appearing someone on the user's screen, usually in a position that makes them click it accidentally or otherwise.

A VPN, otherwise known as a virtual private network is a secure tunnel between two endpoints for communication. This tunnel is built through Transport Layer Security and Secure Sockets Layer (TLS/SSL). All data passed between the two endpoints are encrypted and can only be decrypted by the two parties on either side of the endpoint. This means that all of the data shared between the two is secured and cannot be tampered with or read by another party.

Do you use the same password for all your online accounts? Creating a unique and strong password for each of your accounts is the first step in protecting your privacy. Learn how to create a strong password, and augment with 2-factor authentication to secure your online accounts.