Personal data starts leaking the instant you connect. Phone, game console, smart speaker: whatever the device, somebody out there can watch its traffic. Understanding what your gear sends out, and who is able to read it, is a core piece of protecting your privacy online. Without the right tools, though, you are almost certainly exposing far more than you think.
Switching the VPN off is a surprisingly common way to expose yourself. According to a recent customer survey, some people treat a VPN as a tool for particular moments, such as using public WiFi or reaching hometown websites while abroad. When the job is finished, they disable it and carry on. From then on, your real IP, your actual location and your online activity are all visible again.
Here at TunnelBear we think the strongest protection is an "always-on" habit. If your Bear keeps tunneling around the clock, your personal details stay out of reach of advertisers, your ISP, data brokers and anyone else hoping to profit from you. Below we walk through what a VPN really shields you from, and why it deserves to stay on whenever you are online.
Immediate benefits vs long-term privacy
A VPN gives people meaningful privacy and security, yet it is occasionally used to get around copyright rules. We think an open internet is good for everyone, but a number of content providers are rolling out ever more sophisticated ways to detect and block VPN traffic on their platforms.
“using your VPN as part of a long term security strategy is important for . . . securing your data”
For our customers, a VPN belongs in a long term security strategy, and it is frustrating to learn that hitting a service block frequently leads people to switch TunnelBear off.
A VPN pushes back against censorship, keeps your data safe and lets you reclaim your online privacy. But when it is switched off, TunnelBear has nothing to work with.
Data is a big business
You can find free WiFi almost anywhere: hotels, airports, cafes, conference venues. What you cannot always tell is whether the network is safe. On public WiFi, other people on the same network may be able to watch your activity, and the tools required are a handful of free programs.
Without encryption on public Wifi, an attacker can run a man in the middle attack and read your search queries, the services you reach, and even passwords sent as plain text to sites that lack HTTPS.
A VPN that stays on covers all of your browsing, at home or on a public network. Anyone who shares or watches the network is unable to see your activity, so stealing your data, tracking you from site to site or following what you do gets much harder.
Your data has value, so guard it
Gathering, storing and analyzing data is now a thriving industry. Data brokers, firms that gather information and package it for resale, comb the internet for scraps that look unconnected. After analyzing them and spotting patterns, they assemble user profiles to sell on. A profile may hold anything from your browser settings to your medical details, and together these pieces form a strikingly accurate portrait of who you are and how you live.
After a company builds a profile and sells it, you have little chance of knowing where your details ended up, who can read which parts, or how they are used. People often shrug, "I have nothing to hide, so what does it matter?" Yet personal information drifting around the internet exposes you to every sort of privacy abuse and scam.
Having nothing to hide does not cancel your right to privacy. Obeying the law does not mean you undress with the curtains open; curtains exist so strangers cannot peer through your windows. If you feel you have “nothing to hide” online, picture always-on encryption as a curtain that stops companies from watching your private data while you browse.
Privacy is a universal human right
It turns out the data companies collect is worth more, and says more about us, than most people assumed. Location history by itself reveals your home, your workplace, the people you visit and how long you linger. Add search history and purchase records and you get an astonishingly detailed diary that you never agreed to keep.
Collection also deserves attention because it can hardly be reversed. After a breach you can swap a password, but you cannot swap a behavioural profile. Because of that imbalance, shrinking the data linked to your identity from the start works better than attempting to scrub it later.
Always on
Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights names privacy a Universal Human Right. It is no luxury reserved for those with secrets; it is what makes free thought, free association and a free press possible. On a network built without privacy in mind, encryption is the practical way to exercise that right.
This is the argument for always on. With TunnelBear running constantly, you never have to weigh up each network and ask whether it is safe enough. Every connection gets encrypted automatically, which is precisely how a privacy tool ought to work.
We hope that clears up why we design for a world where protection never switches off. Keep asking questions, keep your traffic encrypted, and let your Bear keep digging.
Sincerely,
