On February 26, 2013, the launch of anti-piracy scheme “Six Strikes” was announced; it is also called “Copyright Alert System”. This clearly means that ISPs will be spying on people. However, the ISPs might not be monitoring each and everything a person is doing on the internet, but they will watch people very closely.
One should protect himself from getting spied on by his Internet Service Provider
The Internet service providers are fully capable of reading the unencrypted contents users send over the Internet. They can also track all the IP addresses contacted by the users, which means they know all the websites visited by that user. IP addresses and port numbers are called the metadata; The ISPs collect the metadata, and this information tells them which people were contacted by a user. Mr. Dan Auerbach who is the Staff Technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the PC World that your ISP is tracking “who you’re sending email to but not the content.”
In other words, the content is available to the ISPs even if they are not tracking it. If ISPs want to check, they can see what a person wrote in an email, and what pages of a website were visited by that person. However, the legal limit in USA is that ISPs are legally allowed to share the content only with the government. Nonetheless, ISPs are allowed to share the metadata of the users with anyone they want to.
According to Dan Auerbach, “A lot of opacity surrounding what they actually do. It’s difficult to know what a given ISP is doing with the data.” Most people do not read privacy policy, and those who try to do so find it unclear and difficult to understand. If a person starts thinking how much time he spends online in 24 hours then he can understand that it is a lot of information that ISPs are collecting and keeping in their records for 2 years.
VPN is the solution
Now the question is that how a person can protect himself from getting spied on. The answer is by using a VPN; it is the easiest and the most cost effective way to protect his online data and IP address. A VPN service allows users to securely get connect to the many IP addresses through hundreds of servers in different countries. When someone uses a VPN service then he chooses an anonymous IP address from all the IP addresses, and the real IP address is hidden; therefore, Internet service provider cannot track it. When a person gets connected to VPN then all the content he is sending across the Internet becomes encrypted. This means that the only intended source will be able to read that content.
Advantages of VPN
VPN services come with visual guides, 24 hour support, step-by-step instructions and free software; its annual program doesn’t costs much. A VPN service is simple and user-friendly, and no one needs to be a computer expert to use it.
Best 5 VPN Service Providers
There are many VPN service providers in USA and Europe that claim to have good service. However, if a person wants to get the best service on good price then here are some recommended VPN service providers:
| Rank | Provider Name | Starting Price | Money Back Guarantee |
Visit Provider Site |
 |
ExpressVPN | $6.67/month | 30 Days |  |
| 2 | IPVanish | $10.00/month | 7 Days | |
| 3 | Hidemyass | $11.52/month | 30 Days | |
| 4 | VyprVPN | $10.00/month | 7 Days | |
| 5 | StrongVPN | $21/ 3 months | 7 Days | |
