Online anonymity also means you're free to dabble in torrenting/peer-to-peer file-sharing - not that we condone the illegal kind. That information can also wind up in the hands of certain government agencies if your ISP is served with a subpoena.Ĭonnecting to a public WiFi network is especially risky since you don't know who set it up or who else is using it wannabe hackers can easily hop on to intercept your internet traffic in some sort of 'man-in-the-middle' (Opens in a new tab) attack when you're browsing the web at a café, library, or airport.Ī VPN takes care of those privacy issues and then some: With your IRL location hidden, you can skirt geo-restrictions that streaming services like Netflix have put in place and bypass government censorship in places like China. Your Internet Service Provider, or ISP, tracks your every click to compile browsing logs they (sometimes) sell to marketers, who are champing at the bit to use your data for targeted ads. It's when any of your precious data ventures outside the localised protection of your Mac that things start to get dicey - and that happens every single time you connect to the web. Furthermore, all of the data that lives on your macOS device's hard drive is secured with FileVault 2 (Opens in a new tab), a full-disk program featuring XTS-AES-128 encryption (Opens in a new tab) and a 256-bit key. Do you even need a VPN with a Mac?Īll Macs and MacBooks come with built-in antivirus software that blocks and removes malware, and any apps you download from the internet are swabbed for malicious code by Apple's Gatekeeper (Opens in a new tab) tool. Nobody can see into the tunnel, and everything inside is protected against online threats. All of your activity is untraceable and secure because everything passes through an encrypted tunnel. In the most basic sense, it's a service that keeps you totally incognito on the web by masking your online activities and making it seem like your connection's coming from somewhere you aren't. Without getting too deep in the weeds - we've already done so here - a virtual private network, or VPN, is an encrypted connection between your Mac and a private, remote server. All of this is essential if you own a MacBook, because you don't want online threats attacking your most precious device.

VPNs can encrypt your traffic and provide protection against things like hackers, viruses, and malware. VPNs can also help to protect your privacy and make your browsing more secure (although it's always a good idea to vet your VPN provider's claims carefully - some do a better a job than others). These security tools offer many benefits, including bypassing geographic restrictions for unlocking shows and films on popular streaming sites. There are a number of reasons why you might want to start using a VPN. This content originally appeared on Mashable for a US audience and has been adapted for the UK audience.

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