A 14-Year-Old Asks: When Should I Get a VPN?

"One of my students sent me this letter," writes Slashdot reader Hasaf. "I have a good idea how I will answer, but I wanted to put it before the Slashdot community." The letter reads: Right now I am 14 years old, I was wondering when I should get a VPN... I was thinking about getting the yearly deal. But right now I really have no need for a VPN at the moment. I was thinking of getting a VPN when I'm in 11th grade or maybe in college. What do you think?
Of course, the larger question is what factors go into deciding whether your need to be using a VPN. So leave your best answers in the comments. When should you get your first VPN?

Comments

Ah, that question

[jawtheshark]

First thing is that you need to understand what exactly a VPN is and what it protects you form. People hear VPN associate it with privacy and security and think it's a magic pill. It isn't. It has very specific uses, and it can protect you in some ways, but in many it doesn't.

I always compare it with a very long cable that you stick into another network. Imagine, you are at McDonalds, and you could have a very long cable to your home network. You could access your NAS at home, surf from the IP address at home, all through that cable. That is what a VPN is: it allows you to plug into a different network. So what does this protect you from? In my example, from McDonalds and the other patrons on the McDonalds network. They can try to see what you do, but all they will see is the "cable" (the encrypted traffic) to a certain IP address (your home connection). What happens on that cable is opaque to them.

However, if you surf the Internet over a VPN, it has an endpoint. In my example, that would be your home connection. So the sites, you visit see your home connections IP, your parents still could have filtering software on that home connection, etc... It would be as if you were physically at home and no different. The sites you visit can still track you.

So, VPNs are basically good for three things:

• Hiding your geographical location
• Hiding your activity from the people that run your Internet connection (your ISP, McDonalds, your parents, etc...) However, you trade it for visibility of your activity to the people that run the VPN (or if you build your own, the people where your rent your VPS/server/connection).
• Accessing private resources on private networks. This is mostly in a business setting (granted, I do it too, but I'm a huge nerd)

So, now, with this information, you should be able to ask yourself: Is this the kind of functionality and protection I need? If no, you don't need a VPN. If yes, go ahead.