I would like to share an experience we had, mostly to serve as a bit of a warning.
I work from home and run a fire safety company. We have a lot of internet traffic coming and going and in order to help protect the privacy and security of this information we thought it would be a good idea to have a VPN.
A side note to this is that we had a running argument going with some of our neighbors over (them) feeding deer and (me) hunting them....sort of a Stepford Wives thing going on in the neighborhood but the whole altercation put us on the wrong side of the opinion of that group within the neighborhood. One of the husbands within the group is a high up within the police force for our locality.
So, running a small business we have techs stopping in all the time, coming and going with paperwork, money, supplies, tools and such things you have to go to your work office for. Along with the high level of internet traffic. The mad neighbors seized on this as an opportunity to use the aforementioned husbands influence with the police force to convince someone over there that we were dealing drugs. They went so far as to place undercover officers up and down our street for over 4 months surveilling us. We knew it, even got told by one of the "cool" neighbors that it was going on. We weren't doing anything, so it seemed like some funny joke....
Well, when 20 fully armed and geared up SWAT team members broke through our front door and took the entire family to jail, it wasn't so funny.
It turned out later on, when we were able to get copies of all the court documents, that during the surveillance activities that a device was installed to monitor our phone and internet traffic. Specific concerns were raised by the "team" and then the judge that we had "high volumes of internet traffic that was being concealed".
The warrants that were drawn up specifically mentioned finding drug money, ledgers, computers, phones, notebooks, etc. used in the commission of crimes related to selling drugs, and the concealment and movement of monies.
The entire thing a direct result of utilizing a VPN and a stupid argument.
It turns out that where we WEREN'T selling drugs or running a money laundering operation that the police agents seeing our techs come and go, the internet traffic, and finding a small amount of marijuana in our son's room when they served the warrant was all they needed to cart us all off to jail and the subsequent legal troubles from said. The whole thing cost us thousands of dollars and more. It sucks that the weed was in the house....but certainly didn't justify the cost to our taxpayers and ourselves. Be aware that using a VPN isn't always looked at by those who would wish to know what you are up to as "security", but hiding something.
I work from home and run a fire safety company. We have a lot of internet traffic coming and going and in order to help protect the privacy and security of this information we thought it would be a good idea to have a VPN.
A side note to this is that we had a running argument going with some of our neighbors over (them) feeding deer and (me) hunting them....sort of a Stepford Wives thing going on in the neighborhood but the whole altercation put us on the wrong side of the opinion of that group within the neighborhood. One of the husbands within the group is a high up within the police force for our locality.
So, running a small business we have techs stopping in all the time, coming and going with paperwork, money, supplies, tools and such things you have to go to your work office for. Along with the high level of internet traffic. The mad neighbors seized on this as an opportunity to use the aforementioned husbands influence with the police force to convince someone over there that we were dealing drugs. They went so far as to place undercover officers up and down our street for over 4 months surveilling us. We knew it, even got told by one of the "cool" neighbors that it was going on. We weren't doing anything, so it seemed like some funny joke....
Well, when 20 fully armed and geared up SWAT team members broke through our front door and took the entire family to jail, it wasn't so funny.
It turned out later on, when we were able to get copies of all the court documents, that during the surveillance activities that a device was installed to monitor our phone and internet traffic. Specific concerns were raised by the "team" and then the judge that we had "high volumes of internet traffic that was being concealed".
The warrants that were drawn up specifically mentioned finding drug money, ledgers, computers, phones, notebooks, etc. used in the commission of crimes related to selling drugs, and the concealment and movement of monies.
The entire thing a direct result of utilizing a VPN and a stupid argument.
It turns out that where we WEREN'T selling drugs or running a money laundering operation that the police agents seeing our techs come and go, the internet traffic, and finding a small amount of marijuana in our son's room when they served the warrant was all they needed to cart us all off to jail and the subsequent legal troubles from said. The whole thing cost us thousands of dollars and more. It sucks that the weed was in the house....but certainly didn't justify the cost to our taxpayers and ourselves. Be aware that using a VPN isn't always looked at by those who would wish to know what you are up to as "security", but hiding something.