How to Choose a VPN – Forbes Advisor Australia

With plenty of global VPNs available to the Australian market, how can you choose which is best for you? VPN providers offer various features, so it is best to consider what you need from the network and what cost you are willing to pay.

As Neel Baggam, a cyber security engineer for Deloitte explains, some of the most crucial factors to consider when comparing VPNs are to “read the privacy policy to understand what kind of logs and data the vendor collects from the user, and how it is stored”.

Baggam also recommends making sure the VPN provider has a fast network speed and an extensive server network. Here’s what that all means, along with additional VPN features to consider.

Related: Nord VPN Review

Number of servers and locations

The number of servers and locations a VPN has can affect the overall quality of the network. If it has a large number of servers, this means all of the VPN providers’ users will be spread out across those servers. With a smaller number of users on each server, this allows for better connection speeds and stable performance.

Additionally, a higher number of servers across various locations allows users to switch between preferred locations. This can enhance the security of your connection, as it makes it harder for third parties to track your data if the server you are accessing websites with is based in Australia one day, but connecting from the UK the next day.

Simultaneous connections

VPN providers offering a varying number of simultaneous connections. This means that you, your family or your business are able to connect to the same network at the same time across various devices.

Even while connected to the same network simultaneously, the individual user’s data will not be shared between devices. It is most common for a VPN provider to offer around five simultaneous connections, although some offer more.

Connection and download speeds

“Anytime you go online, speed is important. Nobody wants to deal with loading pages, long downloads, buffering streams, or lagging video games,” writes VPN.com founder Michael Gargiulo.

Using a VPN, however, has shown to slow the average internet experience by 10-20%–a difference which would…