Should I use a VPN on my iPhone & Mac? I don’t use public WiFi. The only WiFi I use is mine at home. I don’t click on unknown emails or links. I just want to make sure my personal stuff stays safe. Is there a consensus?
Thanks for opinions.
Cass
I use a VPN with my Macbook, Windows laptop and my iPhone when I'm using public WIFI and the reason is that, I don't trust the security of public hotspots and their DNS services. Using a trusted VPN bypasses all of those things and allow my VPN provider to direct http(s) requests to the appropriate websites. However, the majority of websites today including Macrumors accept a https encrypted request which provides encryption between you and the website. You will see a lock sign on the browser address. You can also force enable https connections using an extension called HTTPS Everywhere for Chrome browsers.
Having said that, what you are after should be a more secure WIFI router with higher grade AES encryption protection and a very long complicated WIFI password that is hard to brute force attack and compromise your WIFI connection as well as some sort of secure monitoring services provided by the WIFI router to monitor any compromised devices through malware sending out private data back to the source of the infection. Also installing Malwarebytes to daily scan your Mac and protect it from malware infections is also a good daily precaution.
Most of the time though, your personal stuff gets compromised by malware infection from the iPhone and Mac. In fact, that was what happened to my iPhone and my Mac even though I had VPN on at home. iPhone was using Lockdown, but it didn't stop it from getting infected with malware. So how did I know it got infected with malware? My security WIFI router notified me that my iPhone was trying to make a connection to a site that was known to steal information. In essence, it was dialing home to dump whatever private info that it captured through keylogging and my security WIFI router caught it and stopped the connection. Once I installed iVerify on my iPhone and cleansed the iPhone from the malware, it has been good since. Same with my Mac Pro and my Mac Mini that also got infected by malware and dialed home to the source to upload private stuff and there were stopped by my security WIFI router. After Malwarebytes and Bit Defender were installed and deep cleaned the machines, my Macs are good now. I didn't realize that there were a lot of malware infections found on both machines. And I thought I was safe browsing, but then I guess I was wrong in that assumption!
VPN does not prevent malware infection at all and people these days do not steal data by spying on your data stream. They steal your data by implanting malware and let the malware collect the necessary data and then make contact back to the source. If you don't own a security WIFI router to catch it, then no VPN in the world can stop malware from sharing your personal stuff with the crooks.
I personally use VPN only in public places with my iPhone and my laptops, but I also double that with security software like BitDefender and Malwarebytes with daily scans for malware. No matter how careful I am with safe browsing, there is a human error factor that security software can help mitigate.
