There are two main reasons to use a VPN. The first is to get around the geoblocting during the eyes of movies or television programs or access to cheaper services abroad. The second, and perhaps more serious, is to achieve stronger data security.
Regarding the second group of users, VPNs are vital tools to surf the web with peace of mind. The VPN server provides an additional layer of safety and figures your data – something that is particularly important if you cannot guarantee a Wi -Fi network. If you are on vacation, for example, you may have to fall back on a Free Wi-Fi at the hotel or in a coffee, putting you at the mercy of the pirates who would like to steal your data.
If you just want to check the titles of the news or briefly travel YouTube, this risk is probably acceptable. However, if you need to transfer company data or keep a conference of sensitive teams, it would be wise to set up additional protections.
How hackers can beat a VPN
The use of a VPN increases the level of data security, but it is important to know that this does not make you waterproof to attack. The pirates, unfortunately, have tricks in their rounds which can surpass a VPN, which has led to criticism of their security in recent years. An expert, Michael Horowitz, even argued that VPNs on iOS are a scam.
A potential threat, for example, is the tunnelvision attack method. If a hacker obtains an administrative control on the local network, it may be able to activate a DHCP parameter called Option 121, which means that some or all the transmitted data is no longer protected by the VPN.
If you want optimal protection, in other words, using a VPN is not enough. You must pay attention to the additional security features offered.
Consult our overview of the best VPNs for Mac, which includes the best options we have examined.
The importance of a killing switch
The key characteristic to be sought is called a killing switch, which is offered by renowned VPN suppliers such as NordVPN (examined here) and Surfshark (examined here). The name may seem alarming, but it simply means an emergency switch. This is an important element in your safety configuration.
The problem is that a VPN connection can sometimes be interrupted without the user immediately going to what this happened; The user then inadvertently sends and receives data outside the protection of the VPN, which facilitates the pirate strike. In this situation, a killing switch automatically ends the Internet connection and prevents the user. Such a killing switch is often able to block attacks such as Tunnelvision, at least under MacOS. However, this function is not provided by all VPN suppliers and can vary between macos and iOS.
Even the free version of Proton VPN (examined here) for iOS offers an emergency switch, for example, while Norton's paid VPN (examined here) unfortunately only works on MacOS, Windows and Android.
Depending on the system, the Kill switch can affect the entire system or simply individual applications. With Nord VPN, for example, you can use the MacOS version to specifically protect the applications selected via the Kill switch, while with iOS, the whole Internet connection is affected and all applications are protected. This is the case with most VPN services on iOS.
However, this option is not always active in the default parameter; You may have to activate the function first via the default settings of the application. Needless to say, this is highly recommended.
See also our best VPNs for iPad.
Extreme security: go beyond the killing switch
Although a powerful VPN service with a killing switch should offer more than sufficient protection for an office Mac, there remains a residual risk on iOS. In practice, at least in my opinion, this threat is negligible. But if you want to be safe, some products offer even more security options. ExpressVPN, for example, offers a function called Network Protection, which offers additional security on the iPhone. (Keep in mind that this also blocks useful network functions such as Personal Hotspot and Carplay.)
Mullvad (examined here) also developed an additional security function for iOS called DAITA (Defense against the analysis of traffic guided by AI). With this option, the VPN server adds additional data and changes the size of the packages. The objective is to make foreigners impossible to decipher the encrypted data intercepted. However, this only works with certain servers, and for most home users, a good VPN with a killing switch should be completely sufficient.
The recommended VPNs mentioned in this article
This article originally appeared in our Sister Macwelt publication and was translated and located in German.
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