The technological advancements in the smartphone industry has transformed the world into a digital hub and you are bound to live with it regardless of choice. From merely making a phone call to accessing your confidential banking credentials, smartphones are a necessity.
However, where these tech-advancements bring a lot of convenience in our lives; it introduces a couple of risks too. Coming across some hacking activity or an online scam every other day has become a regular routine news in our lives.
This clarifies everyone’s need in the present time and is expressed in a single word ‘Privacy’. So, in this article, you’ll be learning whether getting a VPN for your smartphone is a secure choice for your online privacy or not…
What is a VPN for Smartphones Service and How Does it Work?
A VPN or a “Virtual Private Network” comes in handy for tackling online privacy related threats. It hides your online identity and location by disguising your IP address and through applying encryption over your internet traffic.
It routes the traffic through privately secure tunnels and connects with remote servers, which in turn keeps you anonymous online.
Is it Safe to Use a VPN Service on Your Smartphone?
Well, the answer to this question is a bit tricky and depends upon the specific VPN service you use. Generally, almost all the known and reputed VPNs available provide more or less similar nature of services and mostly are dependable and genuine, however, we cannot ignore a couple of free and unreliable VPN services that carry potential risks if you use them. These risks are:
- They may record your activities and online data.
- They may be involved in a fraudulent scheme or a scam.
- They may trade your browsing information to various marketing and ad agencies.
This puts up a lot of responsibility upon the users as they need to ensure that they are using a reliable and a genuine VPN service and not the scammers. Unreliable VPN services are not guaranteed to provide ‘No-Log’ policies. Lastly, these types of VPN services are often involved in trading with marketing agencies to trade off your online and browsing information.
Although, a VPN service could be used to fulfill various purposes, yet, the actual purpose behind using it is to ensure and enhance your online privacy and anonymity from hackers, snoopers and scammers etc. Hence, it is not only safe to use a reliable VPN service on your smartphone, it is in fact highly recommended too.
Factors to Consider While Choosing a VPN for Your Smartphone
Your smartphone is probably the closest entity to you and it definitely holds the maximum number of secrets and confidential information you have. Undoubtedly, this cannot be taken lightly and strict measures must be taken and following factors must be considered while choosing a VPN for your smartphone:
Online Privacy and Security
Always thoroughly investigate before subscribing a VPN service if it is authentic and ensures a clear and a strict ‘No-Log’ policy. Do not limit your research up to this point only, also look for various specialized privacy related VPN features like Kill Switch, Split Tunnelling and most importantly do a little research over the encryption type and standards being offered.
Network Infrastructure
While using a smartphone, the maximum utility is to get the best of the service while roaming around anywhere in the world. A major determinant of a reliable VPN service is the quality of Network Infrastructure and the service coverage through the number of servers installed on remote locations. More the number of servers installed, the more reliable the service will be.
Service Reliability and Speed
Smartphones are recognized for their fast speed performance and multi-tasking abilities. Using a VPN service on a smartphone, you will be only able to get the optimal experience if the VPN service will be reliable and speedy too.
Therefore, always ensure first that the VPN service under consideration must offer high-speed dedicated servers exclusively for smartphones or certain state-of-the-art technologies like Obfuscation Technology, WireGuard Protocol and related others for enhanced speed experience on your smartphone.
Maximum Multi-Logins Allowed
Reliable VPN services offer multiple multi-logins simultaneously on a single subscription. This offers real fun for using a VPN service on a smartphone. Almost all the household members can use the VPN individually on their respective smartphones anywhere anytime. Hence, always consider the maximum multi-logins facility while choosing a VPN service for your smartphone.
Accreditations from Independent Bodies
As we established above that a smartphone is the most personal and important entity to you, hence, don’t compromise over anything and always ensure the highest degree of security, privacy and performance by verifying if they have been accredited by various globally recognized independent audit firms.
Benefits of Using a VPN Service on Your Smartphone
As we have determined above that the actual purpose of using a VPN service is to ensure and enhance your online privacy and anonymity, however, several other benefits can be achieved by using a reliable VPN service which are as follows:
Protects Your Personal Data on Smartphones
We use smartphones all the time and perform all the different activities throughout the day. As a result, smartphones remain connected to the internet 24/7 and are busy in performing various activities like file sharing, downloading apps, sending / receiving emails, etc.
There is a very high probability especially while using public WiFi networks like restaurants, cafes etc. that someone may intervene intentionally and try to acquire sensitive information like your bank account credentials. By using a reliable VPN on your smartphone, you can protect all your personal data.
Unblocks Regionally Restricted Streaming Sites
Using a reliable VPN for Smartphones service, you can unblock and watch all your favourite content on your smartphone that has been regionally blocked or restricted in your region. For example, HBO restricts its content outside the USA and cannot be accessed in the UK.
Therefore if you want to unblock HBO Now in the UK, all you need to do is to just connect to a server based in the USA with a VPN. This way, your original IP address will be masked and your online location will be spoofed and the HBO server will sense your online location to be within the USA.
Accessing Personal Files When Remote Working
While working remotely, you might need to share and attach a highly confidential company sheet or document that you need to get access to from your company’s official online portal, using a VPN service on your smartphone will let you access all of it in a highly secure environment with no probability of any data breach or leakage.
Keeps You Anonymous from ISPs, Snoopers and Hackers
Using Military Grade Encryption with AES-256 Bit-Keys, a VPN service on your smartphone protects all your activities and personal data/files from your Internet Service Provider, snoopers and hackers etc.
Wrapping Up
We use smartphones all the time for all our activities, jobs and business purposes. Hackers and scammers are always in search of opportunities to intervene and try to get access to confidential information and personal data available in people’s smartphones.
A reliable service providing VPN for Smartphones serves as a great protection layer against hackers, scammers and related cyber threats.
>> Also see Cybersecurity in the Covid-19 Era: How to Secure Your Data
Oliver Mackay is an experienced digital marketer with over 5 years’ experience in the tech-industry. He is currently working as an author at hbonowuk.com. Mackay is a tech-enthusiast and extremely passionate about writing and sharing his thoughts on topics mainly related to technology, entertainment, online streaming platforms, VPNs and other tech-related niches
