ISP now stands for “invading subscriber privacy” thanks to the US Senate who recently voted to eliminate broadband privacy rules that would have required ISPs to get consumers’ explicit consent before selling or sharing Web browsing data and other private information with advertisers and other companies.
What does that mean for you and me?
In a world where internet privacy is becoming more and more precious, this is just another blow to our security online. The Senate action would essentially allow Comcast, Verizon, Charter, AT&T, and other broadband providers to collect and sell their sensitive customer browsing information without the consent of the user.
Can A VPN Help Protect My Privacy?
We’ve talked about VPNs here on infiniGeek in the past, and generally let’s face it, VPNs can be shady, complicated, unregulated, and a security risk of their own. A VPN encrypts your data before it leaves your device, it then sends said encrypted data through your local network and internet service provider (ISP) until it reaches the VPN provider’s servers where it is extracted. Imagine being able to encrypt your data as a zip file, sending it, and the recipient unzipping it on their end, essentially this process is referred to as “tunneling.”. This is what you want to do if you are paranoid about using internet in a public place, using public free and open Wi-Fi networks where someone can easily spy on your traffic. People in countries with restricted access to the internet have traditionally used VPN to bypass different content restrictions to access videos, movies, or websites blocked in their country. Now (and in the future) you may want to hide your traffic from your ISP.
Rocket VPN – an easy way to stay secure online
We try to bring value to your life as a loyal reader of InfiniGEEK and a way we try to do that is recommend good products to you. This week we were able to give Rocket VPN a test run on our android smartphones – and let me tell you how easy this makes using a VPN, I really enjoyed my time with it. It’s also available for iOS by the way – give it a try for yourself as you go through my quick review of the app!
Getting Started – First Impressions
Right from the get go I was impressed with Rocket VPN since it made you feel comfortable and safe in a sea of sketchy VPN apps – this one actually felt legit from the start. If you know me you know i’m a sucker for good design, and I really loved the design of this app – you can tell from their website they spent a lot of time and effort on making it really sharp and fun (love the rocketeer space dude).
I was able to dive right into this app the moment it was downloaded – greeted with a clean and easy to use interface, and 250MBs of free secure and encrypted browser surfing goodness.
That leaves a good feeling. You get 250MBs of privacy every month!
You can of course upgrade to unlimited for a fairly reasonable price (around $3.99 per month) but that’s up to you, we are just giving you the lowdown of this app and our thoughts on it in this review.
So the first thing you notice is the announcement of the browser built right in, it’s a nice browser – might not be as feature rich as chrome, but it’s definitely usable – it’s fast and easy to use right away with the protection of the VPN.
To get connected and protected (for free) you just have to select the destination you want to be seen as being your location (which is pretty cool, it’s like you can travel the world from your couch, theoretically). I selected Japan.
It asks you if this is ok, select yes.
and you are greeted with a sweet animation of the rocketeer blasting off! Great illustration.
Features
So once you are secured and connected through the VPN, what can you do?
Well here is a quick list of what you can do:
Access video and website content not available in your country
If your country has a lot of restrictions on content, and you want to bypass those – this app will totally do that for you, here for example we are getting Japanese titles in the Netflix app, which we would otherwise not even be able to see. You can jump around to different countries to get access to everything – you teleporting shapeshifter you. You can use any of your apps through the VPN btw, youtube, hulu, it all works.
Encrypt your browsing data and increase security and privacy
If you browse the internet at coffee shops or anywhere that has open free WiFi you are putting your privacy and data at risk. With Rocket VPN you are protected because your data is encrypted before it leaves your device – so no one can snoop or spy on your browsing history, not even the ISP. Since you can change your location and your browsing data is encrypted you can truly browse the Web anonymously and not worry about anyone invading your privacy or online rights.
Conclusion
I really enjoyed my time with Rocket VPN and will probably use it as my go to VPN since it seems reliable and trustworthy. The price is nice as well, you can’t beat a free VPN even if you only get 250MBs per month, that is enough for most people to browse on the go. When you need more I think the price is reasonable, and if you want to really try it they give you 7 days of unlimited for free so you can really make an informed decision, so don’t take my word for it go give it a try yourself and see if it delivers what you expect from a top tier VPN service.
One more thing, the guys that made the app, Liquidum – received The Top Developer badge on Google Play, granted to developers committed to launching innovative and high quality apps. So you know these guys aren’t playing around and they aren’t trying to trick people out of their hard earned money, it’s a polished and professional app and you can tell.
Let us know in the comments below if you’ve tried Rocket VPN or what VPN service you would recommend? Thanks for reading!