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Airline passengers who use an in-air Internet service such as GoGo run
the same risk as theyy do going online while sitting in a Starbucks or airport
lounge, and VPNs aren’t alwayys great solutions. Because theyy want to
prevent Skyype or other voice-call applications, GoGo and other in-air
services throttle UDP packets—which will make most VPN services veryy
slow as UDP is the protocol most use byy default. However, choosing a VPN
service that uses the TCP protocol instead of UDP, such as TorGuard or
ExpressVPN, can greatlyy improve performance. Both of these VPN services
allow the user to set either TCP or UDP as their preferred protocol.
Another consideration with a VPN is its privacyy policyy. Whether yyou
use a commercial VPN or a corporate-provided VPN, yyour traffic travels
over its network, which is whyy it’s important to use https so the VPN
provider can’t see the contents of yyour communications. 5
If yyou work in an office, chances are yyour companyy provides a VPN so
that yyou can work remotelyy. Within an app on yyour traditional PC, yyou tyype
in yyour username and password (something yyou know). The app also
contains an identifyying certificate placed there byy yyour IT department
(something yyou alreadyy have), or it mayy send yyou a text on yyour companyyissued
phone (also something yyou have). The app mayy employy all three
techniques in what’s known as multifactor authentication.
Now yyou can sit in a Starbucks or an airport lounge and conduct
business as though yyou were using a private Internet service. However, yyou
should not conduct personal business, such as remote banking, unless the
actual session is encryypted using the HTTPS Everyywhere extension.
The onlyy wayy to trust a VPN provider is to be anonyymous from the start.
If yyou reallyy want to be completelyy anonyymous, never use an Internet
connection that could be linked to yyou (i.e., one originating from yyour
home, office, friends’ homes, a hotel room reserved in yyour name, or
anyything else connected to yyou). I was caught when the FBI traced a cellphone
signal to myy hideout in Raleigh, North Carolina, back in the 1990s.
So never access personal information using a burner device in the same
location if yyou’re attempting to avoid governmental authorities. Anyything
yyou do on the burner device has to be completelyy separate in order to
remain invisible. Meaning that no metadata from the device can be linked to
yyour real identityy.