Good and Bad Reasons to Use a VPN

Everyone who is security conscious online has probably heard about VPNs. To those who do not know, a VPN is a way to connect two separate networks over the Internet as if they were in the same building. The connection is usually (and should be) encrypted so that third-parties cannot easily snoop on your data.

Other people use VPNs for the purposes of securing their connection / hiding their IP address when they surf online by sending all of their Internet traffic over a company’s VPN server. There are several companies that offer VPNs for a low cost to their users.

In this post, I am just going to talk about VPNs in the context of people using them to secure their connection and/or hide their IP address. I am not recommending any particular VPN service. You must make that decision for yourself.

Online privacy is important to many people. While people can (and do) use VPNs for malicious reasons, there are many people who legitimately use VPNs for privacy.

Good Reasons for VPNs

  1. VPNs can secure your connection over risky Internet links (e.g., coffee shop, hotels, airports, etc.).
  2. Access websites that only serve a particular country (e.g., someone in the UK could use a US VPN to access US-only content on a website).
  3. Prevent websites (and online advertisers) from knowing who is really accessing their content.  Please note that browser fingerprinting makes it much harder to prevent websites from knowing who you are, and a VPN will not prevent a website from fingerprinting your web browser.

Bad Reasons for VPNs

  1. VPNs cannot keep you completely anonymous. All you are doing by using a VPN is making the VPN your “new” ISP. They can potentially mess with your data that you are sending through their servers.  Also, someone could be tapping the Internet link that your VPN provider is using. This may compromise your privacy.
  2. Doing something malicious. No VPN will completely protect you if your are doing something to attract the attention of a large, well-connected organization (e.g., a government agency).
  3. Using a VPN because of “no logs” is not a good idea. I am sure there are some that really do not log, but even if they didn’t at some point, how do you know that they will not start logging without your knowledge?
  4. A VPN will not protect you from viruses. A virus (e.g., from a file download) can still infect your computer even if your are using a VPN.
  5. A VPN will not completely protect you from hackers either.

Posted in Computers, Internet and Servers, Security, VPN

What are DNS Resolvers and How Do They Work?

This short post is about how a DNS resolver works. I also quickly cover the best way to obtain a DNS resolving service.

Please note that I am not going into the specifics on how to setup a DNS resolver. There are plenty of online tutorials for you to follow if you wish to pursue that option.

What is a DNS resolver? Simply put, a DNS resolver contacts a domain name’s DNS server and asks it for information.

A DNS resolver will also do something called caching. When a DNS resolver caches, it is “remembering” the information it previously obtained from a DNS server.

A DNS resolver that caches can save a lot of time that would be wasted looking up a domain name that had just been looked up earlier.

DNS caching is like writing down information on a sticky note, so you can quickly look at it later, instead of having to ask the person for the info all over again.

Here is a simplified example of how a DNS resolver works:

1.   Alex types into his web browser example.com

2.   Alex’s web browser then contacts the DNS resolver (that his computer is set to use).

3. The DNS resolver goes to a root server and get the IP address for the TLD (e.g., com, net, org, etc.) server it needs to access.

3.   The DNS resolver then goes to ns1.example.com (the DNS name-server that the TLD server provided), and asks the name-server for the IP address of example.com

4.   The DNS resolver then relays the information it receives to Alex’s computer. In addition, the DNS resolver caches the retrieved information for later use.

5.   Alex’s web browser now knows where example.com is located (the IP address), and starts retrieving the website.


Posted in Computers, Internet and Servers, Operating Systems

Why Do I Need An SSL Certificate?

This blog post will first try to explain what an SSL certificate is and why you may need one. I will try to keep it plain and simple, but there may be areas that become a little technical.

What is the purpose of an SSL certificate? Well an SSL certificate allows your web browser to make a secure connection to a web service while claiming that you can trust the secure connection.

When you enter a website’s URL into your browser and hit enter, you’re starting a process of establishing a secure connection to that website. This is done through SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) or its successor, TLS (Transport Layer Security).

The process begins with a handshake where the browser and server exchange keys to create a secure connection. The server sends a certificate to prove its identity, and once the browser verifies this certificate, a unique session key is generated for encrypting the data. This ensures that the information you send and receive is protected from eavesdroppers.

While this is a very simple example, it gives you a basic idea of what happens between the web browser and web server during an encrypted browsing session.

Now since we have covered the basics of how SSL works, what are some reasons to use SSL?

  • Helps keep data secure. Without encryption, anyone can potentially view the data you transmit over the Internet.
  • Helps to give confidence to people using your website. When they see the SSL lock icon in their web browser, it makes your web visitors feel secure (and they should be secure!).
  • SSL encryption prevents third parties from modifying a website’s content before it reaches your web visitors. This can be a problem if you are dealing with sensitive information (or any information really). This is why having SSL on a website that technically does not need it can still be beneficial.
  • Adding to the above information, some ISPs have inserted their own scripts / notifications into the web pages their customers visit. This makes for a poor experience for the customer, and also makes the website owner look bad, since most customers are going to blame the website owner for the “bad experience”, instead of their ISP.
  • Having SSL enabled on your website can help with getting a better search engine ranking from Google.
  • Many mainstream web browsers require an SSL enabled website if you wish to use the new HTTP/2 protocol with your website.
  • You definitely need one if you are running an online web store. No one will want to shop on your website if your website is not serving content over an encrypted connection.
  • SSL encryption also hides the specific location you visited on a website.  —  For example, if I go to https://example.com/contact, since the website is using encryption, my ISP can only see that I visited the domain example.com. The encryption hides the /contact part of the URL. So my ISP knows I visited example.com, but they have no clue what webpages I visited on that particular website. Pretty neat, huh?

I hope I have helped you have a basic understanding of what an SSL certificate is and why it can be useful to have one for your website.


Posted in Computers, Internet and Servers, Security

What are Name Servers and why does my Web Domain Need Them?

If you have ever started a website, you probably have heard the term “name-server” before. However, you may not understand what they are and why they are an important part of the web-hosting infrastructure. I will try to keep this explanation simple yet useful.

A name-server is a server that specializes in answering queries regarding people’s domains and the various services that they are providing.

You can think of a name-server like a telephone book that lists phone numbers associated with names. In a similar way, a name-server lists information (e.g., IP addresses) associated with a particular queried domain name.

For example, when someone types in blog.computerlagoon.com, their DNS server sends an inquiry to one of my name-servers asking for information such as the IP address. All information the software needs in order to make a connection with my server.

Without a name-server (or DNS servers in general), you would be typing out numbers (e.g., 12.34.56.789) to access web services instead of domains (e.g., example.com).  As you can see, typing out names is far easier than remembering a series of numbers for every website you visited.

You also want to make sure your web domain has at least two name-servers associated with it. Why? Because if you only have one name-server and that name-server happens to go down, no one that has not recently accessed your domain will be able to get your IP address to connect to your website.

Worse. If you have no name-servers online for an extended period of time (e.g., major outage), then search engines like Google may think that your website is no longer online and delist it from their search results.

That is why having at least two name-servers is recommended.


Posted in Computers, Internet and Servers

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