Using the VPN is generally seen as a way of using UoP services remotely in a relatively safe way, but it does actually offer another advantage for using generic Internet services – because the VPN goes through the UoP firewall, it offers protection against Internet threats above and beyond what is normally offered by most Internet routers.
In addition, all traffic between your computer and the VPN end point is encrypted allowing the use of untrustworthy networks.
Threat Protection
The firewall performs scanning of any traffic that isn’t encrypted looking for viruses, spyware and attempts to exploit web browsers. Such malicious content is blocked to keep you safe.
Network Encryption
Not all networks are equally trustworthy – networks in some public locations (“free WiFi here”) are unprotected and hackers have been known to capture the traffic looking for “interesting” data.
The easy way to solve this issue is to use a VPN that encrypts all traffic between you and the VPN endpoint.
Privacy
So perhaps you don’t want us knowing that you’ve visited that site. Perfectly reasonable except that :-
- We don’t know who visits that site.
- We don’t care who visits that site.
- Even if we were interested, there is too much work on to figure out who visits that site.
- Formal requests to identify who visits that site would be refused.
If anything, using the UoP VPN is a better guarantee of privacy than using a third-party network without a VPN. Unless it becomes a legal matter.