If your company has many offices in different locations, or allows employees to telecommute (work from home), it is highly likely that your company has VPN installed. VPN stands for virtual private network and has many business applications, but primarily a way to extend the office network over various locations.
On the other hand, for ordinary users, VPN can be used to hide their IP address while accessing the Internet. This is also known as anonymous surfing and can be used to bypass firewalls or avail of services such as Internet television, which usually has location restrictions (e.g. users from the UK can access certain US-based websites).
You can find many VPN service providers by doing a search on the Internet. Depending on what you want to use it for, you can get a service for as low as $5 per month, or even for free (browsing only, no downloads or streaming).
But to be able to do more than browsing Internet content and be anonymous at the same time, you will need a premium VPN account. This is easily available, since most providers try to make the set up process as painless as possible for you – easy to follow instructions, no software to install, no IP numbers to configure into web applications, etc. Depending on the provider, the subscription may include a choice of server locations (to be able to visit sites that would normally block your IP address), strong encryption (the data you entered will be encrypted when transmitted over the Internet and make it difficult for hackers to get) and dedicated IP address (you have your own IP address, instead of having a different one every time you log on to the VPN).
That said, before subscribing to a VPN service, decide how you are going to use it: Is it simply for browsing web site content? Download torrents? Watch Internet television? Each provider has its own terms and conditions for service and some will include restrictions against “illegal” activities such as P2P file sharing of intellectual property. It is best to look for and read the fine print before committing to anything.
Also, try before you buy. Providers who offer a trial period show that they have confidence in their product. On your part, it is often the best way to know if the service is works for you.
Here are a couple of things to check: Internet speed and quality of technical support. You will want to know how reliable the Internet speed is, and how fast or slow it is (depends on what you want to do). You will also want a technical support team that doesn’t take weeks to respond to your questions or help requests, and who actually know what to do when problems or issues arise.
Online forums are good sources of feedback on particular VPN service providers. Customer testimonials are well and good, but then you hardly read anything negative in those. With online forums, if you read a lot of negative feedback on a provider from different people, that may be a sign that you shouldn’t do business with that provider. In any case, you should try to get as much information as possible before subscribing.