VPN for Crypto Trading: What to Look for?

Disclaimer: The text below is an advertorial article that was not written by Cryptonews.com journalists.

VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) are meant to increase your privacy and security online, which is crucial to some crypto traders. To put it broadly, a VPN hides your real IP address, by changing it to a different one. This way it secures your privacy and allows you to bypass geographical restrictions. In addition to that, while the VPN is on, all of your traffic is routed through an encrypted tunnel, making it impossible for third parties to eavesdrop on your activities.

On the other hand, browsing the internet without a VPN connection leaves you exposed. Your traffic is not secured and can be monitored by your Internet service provider (ISP) or the government. This is important to those, who live in privacy-restricting countries or simply value their privacy.

This is why premium VPN providers offer not only secure connections, but additional features too, such as kill switch or double encryption. They add an extra layer of security for those who might need it. At the same time, some work as fail-safe tools that are there to ensure that your data will remain secure no matter what happens.

This article is meant to help you find out what features a provider should offer, so you could be sure that all your crypto trading activities will remain private.

Kill switch

Kill switch is a fail-safe that any VPN for crypto trading should have. In case anything goes wrong and the connection to a VPN server goes down, a kill switch terminates the entire internet connection. This is done in order to prevent your IP address from leaking.

This feature is very important to those who use a VPN to access crypto markets that are not otherwise available in their country. As some markets include a clause in their Terms of Service that such accesses are not allowed, an IP leak can result in their account being banned or even funds being lost.

IP and DNS leak prevention

As VPNs for crypto trading are all about enhancing your privacy and security, it’s important to make sure that they do so without any interruptions. Again, a single slip can result in your activities being exposed.

When connected to a VPN server, your browsing data travels between their device and the VPN service through a secure and encrypted tunnel. All of that data is impossible to eavesdrop on by 3rd parties, such as the ISP or the government. IP or DNS (Domain Name System) leaks occur when the secure and encrypted VPN tunnel leaks your browsing data.

It’s entirely up to the VPN provider to make sure that nothing of the sort happens. However, not all providers (especially the free ones) are successful in doing this. To check if your VPN provider is not leaking any information, you can test how secure your VPN connection is on IPv6-test.com and dnsleaktest.com. If either of these tests show your real IP or location when you’re connected to a VPN server, it’s a good time to find a new provider.

Double routing and encryption

Instead of routing and encrypting the traffic once, the Onion over VPN feature does this twice. To put it simply, your traffic goes through an encrypted tunnel to reach the VPN server and once encrypted there, it goes to the Tor network. There it’s encrypted again and passes three different servers, run by volunteers. As this makes it considerably more difficult to identify you, this method also has a negative impact on your connection speed.

The Double VPN feature works similarly to Onion over VPN. However, instead of going to the Tor network, the traffic is routed through an additional VPN server. As this method has a negative impact on connection speed too, it’s considered to be a faster option than Onion over VPN. Furthermore, some websites resolve to blocking Tor exit nodes, so the Double VPN function would help bypass this.

Obfuscated servers

As VPN connections are blocked in some countries or by some ISPs, in most cases this can be bypassed by connecting to Obfuscated servers. Their purpose is to hide the fact that the person is using a VPN and allow them to avoid any firewalls that might be set up.

No-logs policy

Besides having the possibility to use additional security features, it’s also important to know that you can trust your VPN provider. VPN services have the technical capabilities to see some information that could be used to identify the user, such as connection timestamps, session information or bandwidth usage. While most VPN providers claim that they don’t collect any information about their users (the no-logs policy), this is not usually the case, especially with free VPNs.

So how can you be sure that your VPN provider is trustworthy, if you can’t take their word for it? Besides adopting the no-logs policy, some providers go to reputable independent auditors, such as PricewaterhouseCoopers that conduct extensive research of the VPN service. These can include employee interviews, server configuration or technical logs inspections and other aspects. Only when there’s no stone left unturned and nothing suspicious is found, the independent auditors back the provider’s claim of having a no-logs policy.

So which VPN would work?

NordVPN offers a premium service and has all the functions a crypto trader could need, as it has all of the above-mentioned features. Because of this you can be sure that no matter where you access the internet from, your connection will be secure at all times and under all conditions.

In addition to that, NordVPN offers 5200+ servers in 60 countries, so there will always be fast servers to choose from. Not to mention that up to 6 devices that can be protected using a single account. And in case you have any questions there’s a 24/7 customer support team that will be ready to help you out.

The company is based in Panama and operates under the country’s jurisdiction, which does not require keeping any logs. In addition to that, NordVPN is a twice audited no-logs service, so you can be sure that no information about your online activities will be stored.

Conclusion

A reliable VPN is a great tool for not only trading crypto, but regular browsing as well. It keeps you secure and your information private from possible eavesdroppers. While at the same time it allows you to access websites and content you wouldn’t be able to otherwise. As there’s plenty of options to choose from, it’s important to know what features you should look for to be sure that your privacy and security needs are being met.