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It’s that time of year. The nights are longer, the thermometer rarely ventures above single digits, and the impending visit of a certain chubby man in a red suit is encouraging children around the world to really listen to their parents for once. As 2024 approaches, it’s time to take a look back at what this year has brought us – especially the new things we’ve learned in the world of VPNs.
VPNs are constantly evolving as technology advances. Not only is it a competitive market with providers always looking for an edge, but new threats continue to emerge, making innovation and evolution a necessity if VPN providers want to keep pace with the many different groups trying to mine
So, let’s get nostalgic, and review the lessons bigger and better than today best VPN he taught us in 2024.
The packages are in
There is no magic bullet in the world of cybersecurity. It’s an ever-evolving game of cat-and-mouse between companies trying to keep us safe, and those trying to find new ways to defeat and breach security.
Using a VPN goes a long way to enhancing your online security, but there are things a VPN can’t do, and things it isn’t suitable for.
The good news is that many of today’s leading services are more than just VPNs. They offer a useful suite of extra security and privacy tools if you want to sign up for a higher level membership.
It is more expensive to invest in a plan that includes these extra tools, of course, but the comprehensive protection you get in return is worth the investment. These extra features include things like:
- Password managers
- Many VPN providers offer it password managers which generate super-secure passwords and save them in an encrypted vault – so you don’t have to write them down! Two examples of this are NordVPN NordPass and ExpressVPN Keys.
- Antivirus
- While there are many stand-alone antivirus products on the market, a growing number of VPN providers also bundle an antivirus solution with your subscription to help protect against viruses and trojans. Examples of this would be Surfshark One and CyberGhost’s security suite.
- Ad/tracker blockers
- Online advertising is a fact of the internet today, as is the fact that companies of all kinds will try to follow every (digital) move. Ad and malware blockers help simplify your experience and protect your privacy. Most VPNs offer this standard, nowadays. Windscribe calls him ROBERT while the PrivadoVPN version is called Control tower.
- Cloud storage
- Some VPN providers offer cloud storage plans as part of their offerings, allowing you to store your photos, videos and files online instead of cluttering up your mobile device’s limited storage. You can find cloud storage options with providers like IPVanish and NordVPN NordLocker.
- data removal services
- These services reach out to data brokers and request that your data be deleted, preventing the brokers from selling it to marketing and advertising companies. Surfshark VPN is one of the few that offers this as a bundled service, with the Surfshark One plan including a subscription to Unknown.
- Alternate ID
- Another way to defeat data brokers and spammers is to provide fake details whenever you register for something online. You can do this by using an alternate ID. This is a service that generates a fake name, email, and even a phone number that you can use to sign up for websites. Surfshark and ProtonVPN are examples of companies that offer this functionality.
The innovations keep coming
In addition to bundling in all these additional features, VPN providers often develop new privacy-enhancing tools to add to their offerings.
The cybersecurity landscape is always changing, after all, with bad actors cooking up new threats, and more countries resorting to internet blackouts and censorship to protect their regimes.
VPN providers have to work hard to keep up. Here are some examples of the new tools we saw this year:
- ExpressVPN’s new dedicated IPs
- Many providers offer a dedicated or static IP optionbut no one is quite like ExpressVPN’s offer, which claims to be able to assign IP addresses completely anonymously, so even the provider does not know who has which address.
- NordVPN Identity Theft Protection
- NordProtect is a new identity theft protection service from NordVPN that includes credit and dark web monitoring, cyber extortion protection and identity theft coverage. No other provider on the market offers anything like this.
- Surfshark bypasser and data leak checker
- Most VPN providers are not able to offer it split tunneling functionality on iOS devices due to the limitations put in place by Apple, but Surfshark now offers Bypasser, which allows you to specify sites that do not need to use the VPN connection, such as banking applications.
Independent audits still matter
There is no escaping the fact that, for many of us, 2024 will see our salaries that will stretch even further. When money is tight, it’s tempting to think that a VPN subscription isn’t really worth it, and that maybe it might be a good idea to trade it for one of the smaller ones. Free VPNs that appeared this year.
Free will always be a tempting prospect, but switching to one of these smaller free VPNs could cost you in the long run for a number of reasons. One of the biggest being that they tend to lack solid privacy policies – so there is no way to know what they do with your data/privacy, or if they don’t care.
This is why independent audits are so important. These third parties take a magnifying glass to a VPN’s policy/infrastructure/applications/servers to ensure that they have delivered on their promises. But commissioning these audits takes money that free services often don’t have. No one pays them a subscription, after all.
Companies like ExpressVPN, for example, has passed more than a dozen audits. Therefore, while it is a bit expensive, there is no doubt about its commitment to security, and we always recommend the providers as for any VPN, free or otherwise, that has not had its privacy claims properly proven .
2024 continued the trend of internet blackouts, government censorship, and government shutdowns.
This year alone there have been partial and complete bans in many countries including Pakistan, Russia, Mozambique, and Mauritiusby name, but a handful.
VPNs will always be targeted by repressive regimes, as they help citizens access banned/blocked materials such as news outlets and allow them to communicate and mobilize through social media and messaging apps.
Some governments try to block VPNs entirely, but stealth tools it can disguise VPN traffic as regular traffic, allowing people to continue using it. VPNs that offer these tools include Surfshark, ExpressVPN, NordVPN, and Proton VPN.
Apps, sites and services are always gobbling up our data
A lot of applications and sites that we use every day are hungry for as much information as they can collect on us. Not just social media sites, but also food delivery, maps/navigation, and more.
Most of us have gotten used to the idea that we need to trade our privacy for convenience and, for younger generations, “privacy apathy” it’s a growing problem thanks to the number of data breaches that happen almost every day
A VPN can’t stop data collection entirely, but connecting to a VPN adds another layer of protection by encrypting your Internet connection, which prevents your ISP from snooping, making it harder for bad actors to intercept and help to reduce the number of targeted ads you see.
Some VPN tools can give users the power to protect their data on a smaller scale, too, like the kill switch to prevent accidentally spreading information in the real world, and split tunneling to choose which apps use the VPN.
We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example: 1. Accessing a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service). 2. Protect your online security and enhance your online privacy when abroad. We do not support or condone illegal or malicious use of VPN services. The consumption of pirated content that is paid for is neither endorsed nor endorsed by Future Publishing.
