With all the online issues that the world is facing today, the question of why should someone use a VPN seems somewhat unnecessary.
The real question would be why isn’t everyone using these online privacy services?
The internet suffers from heavy censorship and surveillance in most countries of the world and Nigeria is not alone.
There are some generic reasons and Nigerian-specific reasons to be using a VPN and below we’re exploring seven of them.
1) Access Social Media
Back in December 2019, Nigeria had a tough battle to fight, as the authorities attempted to pass a bill that threatened to reduce the citizens’ internet freedoms. The bill would basically allow the government to block social media platforms at will.
However, with a VPN, Nigerians would no longer have to worry about such things.
If the government ever blocks a social media network that you prefer, you can simply connect to another country, where it isn’t blocked, and you would be free to use it as you pleased.
2) Access US Netflix
Nigeria has access to Netflix, like most of the world.
However, you may not have known that what you can access on Netflix in Nigeria is nowhere near what Netflix actually has to offer.
The popular streaming platform has a special catalog for each of the world’s nations, and so, Nigeria can access 207 TV shows and 486 movies.
However, if you were to use a VPN to connect to the US and access the US version of Netflix, you would be able to access 1761 TV shows and over 4,000 movies.
3) Keep your online Privacy
Whenever you use the internet for anything, all of your actions are being logged somewhere.
Your activities are being recorded by your internet provider, the websites that you visit, Google, advertisers, and maybe even hackers.
However, if you use a VPN, you can protect your online traffic by encrypting it and forcing it to flow through a secure tunnel that would hide it from view.
It’s worth checking out a VPN comparison website like VPNCompare which has the best choices for Nigerian users.
Finally, you would be able to do whatever you want to do, without the Big Brother looking over your shoulder.
4) Protect yourself on public Wi-Fi
If you tend to travel a lot or just spend a lot of time in places where you have access to public hotspots, you likely know how useful they can be for accessing the web.
However, they can also be incredibly dangerous, as they are often visited by hackers who are looking for unprotected victims to infect their devices and steal their data.
You can avoid this by using a VPN, which can protect you even if you share the network with a hacker. Of course, you should still try to avoid public Wi-Fi whenever you can to increase your own safety.
However, if you find yourself in a situation where you absolutely must use it, it is much better to do it with a VPN at your side.
5) Access Geo-restricted Services
While Nigeria may have problems with censorship, it is worth remembering that it’s not always the country’s fault that its citizens cannot access certain services.
For example, popular streaming services such as Disney+ or BBC iPlayer are not available in Nigeria, but not because they are censored, but because they are geo-restricted.
This means that the services themselves decided where they will be available, and both of the mentioned ones have chosen to make themselves available to very limited audiences.
Fortunately, you can use a VPN here too, and simply by connecting to servers in the countries that can access them, you will be able to access them, as well.
6) Protect yourself while Torrenting
Torrenting has been one of the most popular ways of sharing files since the internet itself was created. However, due to often abuse and use for online piracy, it is rather frowned upon these days.
If your internet provider finds that you are using torrents, it might throttle your speeds.
Worse than that, if you end up caught downloading or sharing copyrighted materials, you could get into some serious trouble.
You can protect yourself with a VPN, however, and while still doesn’t mean that you should do it for illegal things, we are recommending it because torrenting is in a gray area where you cannot always tell what is right and what is wrong
It would be bad if you were to be punished for making a mistake, which is why we recommend protecting yourself, just in case.
7) Access Information
Once again, we return to the local censorship in Nigeria, where websites might be inaccessible.
This can often result in false news and misconceptions, which would give the people of Nigeria a false sense of the world.
However, you can go around it with a VPN and simply get to more truthful news sources from abroad.
Once again, all you need to do is connect to a server in a specific country, and you will see the internet just like you were from there yourself.
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