SSL for Home

Now that you are working from home, your kids are studying (hopefully) from home, and using your computer devices in odd places (that you can't trust because your IT folks aren't protecting you there), you need to know about one of our best tools: SSL.

SSL (the "Secure Sockets Layer") basically makes your communications channel over which you are talking/texting/anything else very hard to look inside of: sort of like water in a garden hose made of metal. There are some ways around this protection, which we can get into in another article, and a much more exact explanation of SSL and TLS is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security. The point is it will make your communications about as secure as you can expect to make them without extraordinary measures.

When you go to a website in Google, or Safari, or IE, etc. you get SSL when you connect to the website using "https" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTPS). In that case the icon of a lock appears next to the URL in the address bar. This protects anyone from seeing information going across the internet that you want to keep private like passwords, bank account numbers, etc.

How do get this level of protection on your computer or phone when you do other things, particularly when you are on a public WiFI (e.g. Starbucks, should we ever get back)? You get yourself a VPN application for your computer and phone. If you choose the right one it will be the same application subscription for all platforms, so you won't have to pay twice. At this point VPNs are pretty tried and true technology, but there are differences in speed, performance and pricing. The top of the picks are ExpressVPN, Symantec, Surfshark, NordVPN, IPVanish, CyberGhost. Opinions vary on which is best as they do slightly different things and charge differently. For the everyday user any one of these would do what needs to be done for most people.

From then on, to protect yourself, you startup your VPN before you do any other activities on the internet. A word of warning: some services/places you connect to on the internet have a register of known places that VPNs come from. They may block you using their services when you come through your VPN.