With the rising outcry over privacy concerns over the past few years due to the rapid growth of surveillance technology, what if you don’t have 100% trust in your VPN service provider? What if your own VPN provider snoops on your online activities? In this article, we will reveal some useful tips and tricks to help you make your VPN more secure, protective and invulnerable.
Whether you are a home user, a student, a corporation or a financial institution, VPNs have become increasingly popular and utterly indispensable on all counts for all Internet users around the world. They have proven to be an ideal tool for the customer to maintain their online privacy and secure their identity on the Internet. In addition, VPNs have hit the big time and have become more attractive to people who use them to visit and unblock popular websites banned in their countries; such as: Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Google, etc.
As perfect as it sounds, even such highly technologically sophisticated services are quite vulnerable to what they are designed for. It is undeniable that VPNs preserve your anonymity online and also come with clear, uncomplicated setup and use out of the box that puts all of your worries away. However, there are some inevitable situations which require an extra padding of protection to make your VPN more secure.
Tips to Secure Your Internet When Your VPN Fails
You have successfully purchased your VPN, congratulations! You have happily set it up on your device(s) and now wallowing in joy and taking pleasure in your new leading-edge panels of security. It all seems too good to be true until you are somehow away from your still running system and your VPN disconnects! This means that your privacy is compromised because your IP address is now visible to hackers and data sniffers.
Fear not! There are quick fixes to make your VPN more secure!
Some VPN providers; such as: PureVPN connect automatically to the service provider when you turn on your machine or in case of abrupt disconnection. This keeps your IP hidden from prying eyes. Otherwise, the following simple tricks will help you out.
1- VPN services with an “internet kill switch” feature
The easiest way to avoid abrupt disconnections and privacy compromise is purchasing a VPN that comes with an internet kill switch. By selecting this feature from the provider’s settings, all traffic in and out will be stopped making your VPN more secure. The following VPN services are equipped with this feature:
- Hide My Ass
- CyberGhost
- Mullvad
- Private Internet Access
2- VPNetMon
VPNetMon is a VPN service that also comes with a free trial. The software works by constantly monitoring your IP address and close down any specified applications immediately if the connection is broken. This process happens extremely fast that a new connection will not be created from your actual IP address, according to Felix the creator and makes your VPN more secure.
3- VPN Watcher
Similar to VPNetMon, VPN Watcher is another way to make your VPN more secure. This service will stop any specified program at once when your VPN connection is disconnected. However, VPNWatcher doesn’t shut down applications, but only suspends their activity when your connection is lost. This gives you an opportunity to detect flaws in your purchased VPN service.
4- VPNCheck
VPNCheck is another service that can make your VPN more secure, but requires a paid subscription in order to get its full set of benefits. However, VPNCheck offers a free trial for its users that only allows you to check PPTP VPN connections. You need to pay and subscribe to this service to check your OpenVPN connections. In addition to shutting down your connection instantly when compromised, VPNCheck also detects any changes in your local IP address and closes down your connection.
5- Put An End to DNS Leaks
“A DNS leak may happen whenever a DNS query ‘bypasses’ the routing table and gateway pushed by the OpenVPN server. The trigger on Windows systems may be as simple as a slight delay in the answer from the VPN DNS, or the VPN DNS unable to resolve some name,” says Paolo from AirVPN.
You can easily check for DNS leaks via DNSLeakTest.com. You don’t need to install this service. It’s entirely free and very user-friendly. DNSLeakTest.com, like VPNWatcher, doesn’t close down specified applications, but detects and informs you of the IP addresses of your DNS servers and whether they are owned to your ISP or not. Accordingly, you will decide when to reconfigure your network connections and avoid DNS leaks and make your VPN more secure.
6- Use 2 VPNs
Using 2 VPNs instead of only 1 adds more security to your internet connection and strengthens your privacy online. How is it even possible? The answer is delightfully simple, by using 2 VPNs you will be able to tunnel your already encrypted VPN connection through another encrypted tunnel, Inception style! This is very easy to perform on Windows. All you are required to do is create a VPN account normally and connect to it. Afterwards, create another VPN account and connect to it without disconnecting from the first making your VPN more secure. It’s just like magic!
If you don’t prefer the idea of a tunnel within a tunnel, you can use your VPN through TOR. “VPN over TOR gives several security advantages, for a performance price, above all partition of trust,” says Paolo from AirVPN. “In case of betrayal of trust by one party, the anonymity layer is not compromised in any way”, he continues.
Conclusion
Security is a very complex issue that keeps us all on our toes especially when it concerns our personal information and privacy. And no matter how cautious we try to be to maintain our network security by spending money over any VPN service, there is always certain vulnerability that compromises our privacy. We hope that those methods above give you some peace.
If you have more tips and tricks to enhance the security of VPNs, please share them in the comments below.
