We all know it that our time is changing, the internet is developing and evolving at a very fast pace. More and more people are now spending their time online. In fact, more of us now get our news from the Internet than from newspapers and televisions, Recent trends suggest that online privacy is going to be heavily debated in the coming years and the internet as we know it may be gone forever.

In mid-February this year, lawmakers in congress reintroduced a bill that civil liberties groups say would destroy the right to Internet privacy as we know it. The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, would give private companies and U.S. intelligence agencies the power to pass around Americans’ personal data in the name of “national security.” Current American privacy laws would be virtually obsolete and Americans would have little to no internet privacy whatsoever.

President Obama recently signed an executive order on cybersecurity. While his order does clear the way for government agencies and private companies to share information, it comes with very few “privacy safeguards” and it is a cause for concern.

Early on in 2012 we all had a front seat to the SOPA and PIPA debates which took the US by storm. On January 18, 2012, Wikipedia, Reddit, and 7,000 smaller websites coordinated a “service blackout” just to raise awareness for the proposed legislation that would effectively “censor the internet” for americans. Google even joined the opposition effort by collecting over 7,000,000 signatures of users who opposed the proposed legislation.

Even more recently, at the end of February this year, we’ve seen the Motion Picture Association of American, along with the Recording Industry Association of American, partner with the five major ISPs to introduce what’s being called the Copyright System Alert (CSA), better known as the “Six Strikes Policy.”

While the intent of the Six Strikes policy exists only to monitor peer-to-peer internet activity, it still compromises your internet privacy and means your internet activity is being monitored by your Internet Service Provider – a scary thought. What’s most concerning is the precedent this could set for future intrusions by internet service providers in the US or elsewhere in the world.

Internet censorship is already a major issue in countries like China and Iran, but who would have thought that internet privacy and attempts at censorship would become table talk in the United States.

Now the questions is, “How do you protect yourself online and secure your online privacy?

The answer: Through a Virtual Private Network or VPN. VPNs allows you to establish an encrypted VPN tunnel to a host (or server) on the Internet making all your internet traffic impossible to monitor.

In a nutshell, a VPN is a group of computers / servers (or a discreet network) that are networked together over a public network – like the world wide web. Connecting to a VPN is usually done through a software client or a login page online. Once you’ve entered your username and password, your computer interacts with a remote server to begin the connection. Once the server and computer have authenticated the connection, you will have established and encrypted connection that’s completely private.

The most important thing you need to know about a VPN is that it secures your computers internet connection to guarantee that all of your data that’s being sent and received is encrypted and secured.

Choosing a VPN provider can be a difficult task but here a few things to consider when searching for a provider:

Logging is one of the top things to consider when finding the right VPN. When you’re connected to a VPN, the VPN provider can access your browsing data. You will want to know whether or not they are logging your activity. Many providers will tell you up front what their practice is but make sure you are aware of this before signing up. You want to be sure you can trust the VPN service you’ve decided on.

Mobile connection and support is another thing to consider. If you’re signing up for a new VPN service, make sure it will work across platforms (i.e. android, iOS, mac, windows, and linux). You shouldn’t have a problem connecting a VPN regardless of the device you’ve chosen to connect with.

Price is a big thing to consider as well. You shouldn’t be paying more than 10 US dollars a month for a good VPN service and you can even find a few free services online by searching Google. Note that many free services will log your browsing data and they will display frequent ads by using their service. Paid services tend to shy away from data logging and hardly ever display ads. The choice is ultimately yours to make.

Hopefully this article provided you with some insight into the importance of taking online privacy seriously and some necessary steps you can take to ensure your security online.