I would like to know if it is advisable to always have a VPN active when we surf the internet.
I have read many people saying that it is always essential and others say the opposite, only at specific times.
What do you recommend?
Thanks for the answers.
There’s multiple questions and scenarios you need to ask yourself check yourself.
First and foremost.
Do you trust the vpn more than your isp?
Does your isp throttle your traffic or does traffic shaping?
Are you in a country with sketchy data protection and what to tunnel into another country with better data protection? ( mind you traffic after the server isn’t encrypted anymore)
Do you achieve better peering via the vpn?
Maybe you even achieve a better connection quality ( rare but happens)
Are you in a country which likes to censor things?
And how you value each question.
If 1 or multiple are yes you might want to run it 24/7 or not.
Mind you a vpn doesn’t provide anonymity.
A vpn doesn’t protect you against hard crimes.
A von doesn’t protect you against Google, Facebook and other big data company’s in many cases.
Sharing my personal experience. Initially only used it for some websites and off for others. It became a hassle trying to manage so just ended up always having it on. The performance it offers does not hinder my browsing so I’m happy keeping it on all the time.
The downside could be that some sites will recognize the vpn connection and block it. Only then I will change the server to access the website. This happens with some banks.
In my opinion there is no harm in keeping it on. Using it only sporadically seems fine too if you consider only necessary then.
That’s a personnel decision on what you believe is best for you.But I would suggest you get a better VPN than this one.