During this age of computer technology, we are always worried about our security especially when we go online. When we use the internet, we are able to do a lot of things, we can do shopping online, do banking, and even earn a college degree online.
But still, the thought of your privacy to be at risk is what we are dealing with every time we are connected to the internet. There are cases of identity theft, credit card scams, and many more that are threatening our way of life.
Makes you wonder, is there a secure way of going online without all these hassles and be able to stay anonymous or hide your IP address?
Well, actually there is a way.
Continue reading and you will learn a thing or two about securing your identity on the internet.
SOCKS vs VPN
VPN or Virtual Private Network
It is the most common way of securely connecting, downloading, and surfing online. Every computer that is connected to the internet is part of a larger network.
The VPN does the encryption of the data coming from one place and going to another while providing an IP address in the process.
During this process, the server will mask or hide your IP. In terms of online security, VPN does the job quite well.
The only downside to this is that when doing so, it actually drags the speed of your internet to a very low speed.
The reason behind this security that VPN is providing is that it connects you to the internet provider on a secured line and encrypts all your information against hackers.
SOCKS or Socket Secure is an internet protocol that is specifically for the use of proxy servers.
SOCKS uses an extension which is called SOCKS5 which supports the networking technology with the likes of UDP protocol and IPv6.
What the SOCKS5 usually does is that it masks the IP address in order to bypass the restrictions and firewall.
It re-routes the internet traffic of a specific program via a third party proxy server, SOCKS is basically doing what VPN is doing sans the dragging of the internet speed.
VPN is hands down the more secure way to connect to the internet with all the encryption that it will provide and rerouting you to the destination website. The only problem here is that VPN has the tendency to slow down your internet connection due to the many security processes that it usually goes through.
It is best to use VPN during these instances:
- When you want to secure web browsing
- Uploading and downloading torrents or using peer-to-peer services
- It is also needed when you want to go through firewalls
- Bypassing geographic and content blocking
SOCKS5 is slightly less secure than VPN, though it also has security features but not as entirely secured as VPN such as masking your IP address and hides the identity of the user, and the best part about SOCKS is that it doesn’t drag your internet speed. Third party security will still be able to monitor some of your activities and downloads.
Listed below are the best uses of SOCKS proxy server:
- Hiding your location when browsing the internet
- Bypassing geographic or content blocking
- It has improved security over other proxy servers
- When more bandwidth is required, it is the best time to use this proxy server
When it comes down to personal data security, I would still prefer the use of SOCKS proxies rather than VPN.
But it still depends on your personal choice, which will always lead us to ask the experts so that they will impart to us their knowledge and that we will be equipped with the proper information so that we may not fall victim of any form of cyber-crime and identity theft.