When gaming online, surprisingly, there are a lot of ways you can leave yourself open to cyber attacks. Whether this is a direct attack on your system, a phishing attempt, or trying to steal your personal and financial information, there are many cybercriminals out there who have picked gaming platforms as their battlefields to try and commit their crimes and take advantage of people who haven’t taken the necessary steps to protect themselves. If you’re not sure of how you can bolster your protection when gaming online, a good way is through the use of a VPN, or virtual private network. It is a piece of software that masks where you are in the world and keeps you safe. And today we will look at why it should be a key piece of software for you when you’re at VPN friendly casinos and also when gaming online.
How a VPN can protect you online
First, before we look at how it can protect you when you’re gaming online, we will give you a brief overview of what a VPN is. As we have already mentioned, it masks where exactly you’re accessing a website or a game from. Some countries in the world geographically have games that are available to them but not to other countries. And so if you want to access and play a game that you currently aren’t able to due to geographical restrictions, you can use a VPN to simulate that you’re actually accessing the game from a country where the game is permitted.
Also, one of the pet hates for any gamer is lag. Not only does it affect your overall gaming performance and put you at a disadvantage, it is also extremely frustrating. Utilizing a VPN when gaming can help reduce lag. We can’t say with certainty that it will eliminate it, but you will certainly, without a shadow of a doubt, notice an improvement. This is made possible because the VPN can simulate you being at a place virtually that is closer to the servers of the game in question. This means that there is less of a journey for the connections to transmit.
It also means that you’re safe when playing online. Your IP address when using a VPN is hidden. If someone who has malicious intent against you in an online game leaks what your IP address is, this means that you are then instantly vulnerable to a cyber attack. Although this fortunately isn’t all that common, it does sadly happen. So using a VPN means that they can’t see what your actual IP address is, meaning that it removes the chances of them being able to cyber-attack you.
Also, if you are gaming while you’re out and about commuting or waiting to catch a flight, for example, connecting to public WiFi can leave you very unprotected when browsing in general and also when gaming. A lot of the information being transmitted over public WiFi can be intercepted. Whereas if you use a VPN when you are connecting to public WiFi, whether you’re gaming or not, it means that you protect yourself, and it also encrypts the information that you’re sending and receiving over that public Wi-Fi network.
In summary
There are a lot of benefits to using a VPN when you’re online and also when you’re gaming. If it can help your overall performance, you can also benefit and make the whole gaming experience more enjoyable. VPNs remove a lot of the typical frustrations that can affect a lot of gamers. Thus, if you haven’t used a VPN up until now, hopefully this info has highlighted some of the best reasons why you should start using one.