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.

Re: Ah, that question

[jawtheshark]

You can always take more measures, but it is not the VPN that does that. You can surf on the VPN using private mode only, never login anywhere, perhaps even use tor.... etc... but all that is not the VPN.

The point is that you need to understand the tool, before deciding to use the tool.

Re:Ah, that question

[Sad Loser]

So while I think that might be overkill, maybe it is simpler than my solution:

Main Browser
Firefox browser with random agent spoofer, noscript, privacy badger and adnauseam so that I am actively obfuscating tracking.

Secondary Browser
Secondary browser (chrome) that I use to book tickets, use web outlook or do anything that the main browser will sometimes break.

Tertiary browser
Use Torbrowser on the rare occassion that you really don't want to be tracked.

Re:Ah, that question

[AmiMoJo]

There is one other very important thing that a VPN protects you from: unwarranted surveillance.

Government agencies and in some countries ISP monitor and store everything. Law enforcement bypasses legal safeguards. A VPN doesn't make spying on you impossible, but it does stop it being so cheap and easy. It forces the proper channels and oversight to be used.

Requirements first.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's take a requirements-centric approach:

What do you need?

right now I really have no need for a VPN at the moment

Congratulations! You don't need a VPN, so don't get one yet.

Re:Requirements first.

[rodrigoandrade]

Except that, in 2017, unless you roll your own VPN, there's really not much to learn. You just whip out a credit card, pay for a service, install their software (if you don´t just log into their https website), and you're done.

On a business environment (which's not the case in the story), unless you're the admin, you're given a user ID and password to log in a Citrix client. Done.

Remember, we're dealing with the iPone generation that replaces a smartphone when the battery doesn't hold enough charge, or tosses out a notebook when it's running "slow."

Re: Requirements first.

[Calydor]

Would you say the same about sex? Smoking? Drugs? Investing?

Substituting 'VPN' for any of these makes the question very interesting.

Anytime

[dreamchaser]

As long as the parents have man in the middle access it is not a bad idea. Before the kids all flame me for saying that, I saved my daughter from a potential predator because I monitored her Internet use when she was 14.

At that age one is still a child and still tends to have poor judgement. I know I did back then.

Re:Anytime

[Opportunist]

Not to mention that such parenting sets kids up for a lucrative career in IT security, with thwarting such MitM attempts without parents noticing it being the first ITSEC project.

Re:Anytime

[n3r0.m4dski11z]

"I saved my daughter from a potential predator because I monitored her Internet use when she was 14."

So in exchange for busting someone chatting with your daughter to some degree that you have arbitrarily determined was "predator-ish", you violated her privacy and made her not trust you or the network ever again. Thus ensuring that any future incidents are completely out of your control and probably even awareness.

I have taught my kids to be aware, the rules, and why rules are like that and so i trust them to make good decisions online and off. Otherwise you end up holding their hand for their entire lives which is more dangerous, less sustainable and way more stressful.

Re: Anytime

[dreamchaser]

He was offering to pay her bus ticket to travel across state lines. I only sporadically perused her IMs. I'm glad I caught that one. Now, you can eat a dick. Kids are stupid.

Re:Anytime

[dreamchaser]

See my other post. I didn't provide full details. He was trying to buy her a bus ticket to cross State lines and meet him. Get a fucking clue. Do you have kids? You claim you do. I taught her that as well, but a 14 year old is batshit stupid. I know I was at that age. Anyone who says they were not is lying to themselves and others.

Re:Anytime

[Gussington]

At that age one is still a child and still tends to have poor judgement. I know I did back then.

Tell me about it. My 14 year old has gone from regular problem free kid to arrested for shoplifting, to suspended from school for smoking weed, to home-made dyed hair and tattoos in the space of the one month! It's like payback for all the things I did to my parents when I was that age...

Re:Anytime

[Opportunist]

Always two there are, a master and a student.

But you know how that ends for the master, right?

Think carefully how you set it up

[Alain Williams]

if your laptop/phone can connect into your home VPN, then what you carry with you, maybe in another country, could be inspected by border-police/... and they would have access to your home network from their country. Do you want that ? Making things easy for you will also make things easier for people who you might not like.

Re:Think carefully how you set it up

[Anonymous Coward]

Never carry anything to another country that's actually personal. Take a burner notebook/phone with you. Use a local SIM card and if that's not possible, never store contacts/addresses on your own SIM card (dumb idea anyway). When crossing a boarder, have devices that are total clean and innocuous--not signed in to any account you actually care about and maybe signed into throwaways that you don't care about.

If a device leaves your sight it's been compromised. If your notebook is in your hotel room and you are not it's been compromised. Doesn't matter if it actually has, treat it as if it has been. Wipe, reformat, or toss it when you're done. Change any passwords you may have used upon your return home.

If you cannot afford a burner notebook, at least take an image of your drive and put it somewhere safe that you leave at home, and reformat/reload things.

You will access important data using a cloud drive that contains, among other things, your VPN client, when you reach your destination.

Keep in mind that VPNs hide your traffic from prying eyes. They do not hide the fact that you're using a VPN from anyone with half a brain. So if you're traveling to a really backwards country that outlaws VPNs please remember that--and while you're at it, rethink why you're going there in the first place.

If you're not a US citizen and coming to the US, remember that the US is now a third world police state, especially at its borders, and that protections that apply to American citizens don't necessarily apply to you. Frankly, as an American, I'd say do what a lot of non-Americans are doing and just avoid coming here unless or until this place wises up, stops being politically correct, targets people who are actual problems instead of everyone, and generally starts respecting individual freedom again.

this is a troll post right?

[Idimmu Xul]

maybe wait until his 18th birthday?

Re:this is a troll post right?

[swb]

The problem with 14 year-olds is that while they're smart enough to know the words, they don't really know the music. We mistake their verbalization of intellectual concepts as understanding.

Re:VPNs are unusable today.

[jawtheshark]

Commercial VPN? Roll your own and that goes away.

Ok, son, let's talk VPN

[Qbertino]

Ok, young man, here's some important details you should know about VPN

- Not all VPNs are equal. Some fit, some don't. They come and go. When your first VPN goes down, it will feel like the world is collapsing. Don't worry, it isn't. You'll get to see many VPNs in your life and eventually you'll find that one VPN that really fits and you'll stay together and maybe even start your own service. You'll know when the time is right and you've found the right VPN to do just that.

- Some VPNs come with flashy advertising and/or quite some legal block. Don't just look at such VPNs but also at the custom built ones that run their own self-built config scripts and services. Those are real gems and that is where you can find very special VPNs.

- Don't just fantasize and read about VPNs online. Go out and meet some real world VPNs in real life. That is where you will gain the experience to judge VPNs and which work best with you.

- When you get your first real VPN, you still need to protect yourself! I can't stress this enough. Practice applying Firewalls and such when you're in the mood for trying out some VPN.

- When you get your first VPN it might not connect in the first night. Don't worry, it will get better. Soon you'll be VPNing like a bunny.

- If you think you've found the right VPN and want to stick with that for life (very significant decision), do write up a contract covering all the details concerning you and your special VPN - it will save you pain later if things don't quite work out as planned.

Those are the basics, the rest you'll learn along the way.
Godspeed!

Re:Ok, son, let's talk VPN

[Opportunist]

Also important: What you hear and see about VPNs and using them in hacking movies (and yes, son, I know that you're watching them, hey, I watched them when I was your age, even though they were much, much worse garbage in my days, you didn't even get to see the screen, they even show that now), don't take it too serious, that's movies, ok? Nobody expects you to be like that, and trust me, VPNs don't behave like this either. You see how they make you invisible? They show that in the movies because that's what you want them to do, you, their user. But VPNs have their own needs and limitations and if you expect them to be like in the movies, not only will you be very disappointed, the VPN won't work for you either and you'll both be upset at each other.

Instead, find out what your VPN needs from you, find out what your VPN can do for you and best just forget everything you see on those hacker movies. They're made to excite you and deliver a fantasy, not to show you what real VPN networking is like.

Re:Ok, son, let's talk VPN

[bruce_the_loon]

- Some of your friends might claim they have connected their VPN already, but quite likely they're only connected via their loopback adapter.

You've explained it perfectly..

[The Cisco Kid]

Far too many novice users have no understanding what a VPN is. And/or they assume you have to pay for one from some provider.

I myself use OpenVPN to tunnel to my home network when I am using my cell phone to provide access to my laptop, to protect my activity from my cellular carrier (I am not technically "allowed" to "tether") - it doesn't cost me anything, and as a bonus I can access devices on my home network such as IP cam's, etc without having to setup individual port-forwarding in the router.