VPN's and identity theft

[FartBlaster]

Some asshole stole my identity and I'm looking for some advice on what is a good VPN to use for accessing public wifi.? I have windscribe VPN. Also any tips about how to resolve identity theft would be cool. I know there is life lock and such but I'm not looking for another monthly bill.

[AppalachianHerbs]

A VPN actually won't help you much with identity theft. A VPN protects your ISP from seeing where you are going so you can do think like browse dark web or torrents without them seeing it. It won't prevent the information you enter in websites from being stolen or leaked. The best thing to do is use a password manager and keep a different password for every account.

VPNS don't hurt. I run one all the time just for piece of mind when i'm in public places. That is one area a VPN could actually save you is if you were on a public wifi and someone was scanning traffic. But other than that they are more for privacy than security. For security active op sec is really the only option.

[herbalhippie]

I use Private Internet Access and like it very much. It was relatively inexpensive too.

edit: I paid $40 for a year.

Also, like the previous poster mentioned, don't ever use the same password twice. My passwords are like at least 10 characters long and all kinds of whacked out. Numbers/uppercase/lowercase/characters.

eta: Just counted up my FB password, it's 16 characters long. Maybe that's overkill.

[FartBlaster]

What would op sec be?

[AppalachianHerbs]

Op sec is using different passwords, fake names, fake birth dates, fake passwords to those "security questions" they ask you, running a VPN could be part of it. Op sec just means operational security. It basically means everyday good security practices. Not clicking on strange links and checking the URL to make sure they aren't redirecting you to a strange place. Be mindful of phishing attempts etc...

Unfortunatly it's not an easy 1 thing your safe kind of answer. It's more of something you have to stay vigilant about over time because it's generally one small slip up that causes a security breach. And sometimes it's not even anything you can help. Websites get hacked. You can check to see if your data is being sold openly on the darknet by using https://haveibeenpwned.com/ They go through the darknet and record every username and password being stolen so you can see if yours is breached and change it if need be.

Note that if you use different passwords for every account this isn't such a big deal since they only have access to that one account. Unless it happens to be your email or something then you coudl be in trouble. But truthfully that is fairly rare and usually reserved for attacks on important individuals.

[FartBlaster]

Thanks for the info Appalachian

[HouseDogPartyFavor]

I have used three or four vpns over the past year and have stuck with Torguard VPN for around six months and I have no complaints. You can find half off codes easily too so it is fairly inexpensive. I would not suggest using a free vpn though. Most of them are slow and have questionable business models.