Posts Tagged → vpn

Family Encryption

The Cloak VPN service, now getting renamed to Encrypt.Me, is offering a new family encryption service where you can have VPN services for everyone in your family of five for $12.99/month. I’m already a Cloak subscriber. The app is dead-simple to use and I’m often around public WiFi. It really isn’t that much more to upgrade to the family plan and put everyone on it. The question is, are we at a point where I need to get religion into my family about VPN security?

My initial reaction is that I’m being paranoid and my wife and kids would probably not bother with VPN even if I set them up with something as simple as Cloak. However, when I read the full extent of government and non-government snooping going on out there, I’m sorely tempted to put everyone on VPN. This sounds like fodder for a dinner table conversation.

Tunnel Bear VPN


I’ve been on the road a lot the last few weeks and, as happens when you travel, spent a lot of time around tempting, yet unknown, public WiFi. . So I decided to get more serious about VPN.


The biggest reason (to me) to use a VPN service is security. VPN gets you a private Internet connection anywhere there is WiFi. I don’t care when I’m at home but in Starbucks I don’t want anyone to get into Internet connection. It happens. There are other advantages to VPN including the ability to spoof your country of origin, so if you want to watch a video that is available in Europe but not in the U.S., a VPN can trick it into thinking you are in Europe, or Canada, or just about anywhere else. VPNs can also cut out web trackers and other creepy advertising nonsense but like said earlier, I was primarily looking for secure browsing and Internet access while on the road.

I looked at several options and ended up signing up for Tunnel Bear. Tunnel Bear provides a reliable VPN connection with all of the above advantages and a simple interface. It’s either on or it’s off and that’s about it.


If you want to spoof your country, that is easy as well. I wrote this post from Ireland via Hawai’i. I love living in the future.

The Tunnel Bear pricing is also reasonable. You get 500MB per month for free (that can go up with promotions) or you can get unlimited data for $4.99 per month. If you find yourself connecting to strange WiFi, check it out.