Online gaming can be intense, it involves players from all around the world, and sometimes things can get a bit rageful. You can be a target for DDoS attacks, or your street address can be traced from your IP address.
Such a severe data breach can expose you to all sorts of problems. So, how do you protect yourself while gaming? The best way to shield yourself is by connecting to a VPN. This article will cover five reasons why you should consider using a VPN when gaming.
1. Get Rid of Bandwidth Throttling
ISPs can monitor your online activity. They can check how much bandwidth you’re using at any given time and the amount of data you have consumed. If your ISP detects online gaming or anything that takes up much bandwidth, it might reduce your internet speeds. ISPs do so to minimise network congestion.
Once your internet bandwidth is throttled, you will face severe latency issues that can make your online games unplayable. To prevent this from happening, you should connect to a VPN.
A VPN service will encrypt your internet traffic. Hence, your ISP will not be able to monitor your online activity and detect whether you’re gaming or not. This way, you will never face bandwidth throttling.
2. Shield Yourself from DDoS Attacks
In online gaming, any other player can find your IP address with little to no effort. The IP address may expose you to a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. An attack in which the attacker floods your IP address with internet requests to the point your connection goes offline.
In recent times, DDoS attacks have grown in popularity, so you should use a VPN when gaming online. A VPN disguises a different IP address as yours through a remote server.
Thus, any DDoS attacks will be automatically redirected toward your new IP address, not the real one. So, fighting this attack becomes relatively straightforward. You can simply reconnect to the VPN server and have a new IP address.
3. Play Games from Any Region
Some games are restricted to different regions, and you can’t play them from your home country. This happens mostly in beta testing of a new game, where the developer releases the game to very few specific regions.
With a VPN, you can change your location to get around this geo-restriction. Any premium VPN will have the feature of bypassing geo-restricted content. By using it, you can play games from any region.
4. Get Around IP Bans
NordVPN has recently introduced a new feature, Meshnet, which allows users to access devices over encrypted private tunnels. Instead of connecting to a VPN server, you can connecte to other devices directly anywhere in the world.
Using Meshnet, you can effortlessly and securely play multiplayer games with friends worldwide. Meshnet works as your private virtual encrypted LAN (local access network). Thus, the location of your playmates no longer matters.
5. Protect Yourself Against Swatting
Swatting is a severe crime in which a person places a hoax 911 call and sends emergency response teams to the victim’s address. The hoax can be anything like gunfire, hostages, or other acts of violence.
Swatting is not common in online gaming, but there have been a few cases where an online player made a fake 911 call against the victim’s address. You can protect yourself from swatting by using a VPN.
Swatters — the people who perform swatting — do so by getting your actual street address. However, by connecting to a VPN, you can encrypt your entire internet traffic, making it extremely difficult for anyone to stalk you.
Game Safely with VPNs
In a nutshell, VPNs use different technologies to protect your online identity and privacy. By connecting to a VPN, you can enjoy gaming without worrying about a security breach. On top of that, you can also access restricted games and many more with them.