A Virtual Private Network, also called “VPN”, is most definitely necessary in today’s world of “Spy versus Spy”. The average internet connection is anything but secure. Everything sent over an unencrypted connection is ripe for the picking by anyone with the proper knowledge and half-decent equipment.
A VPN, on the other hand, creates a secure network by encrypting each data packet so that even military-grade hardware cannot decrypt without the key. It’s not even possible to tell the form of the data by looking at the packets: a text file is indistinguishable from a video file. With truly secure connections, not even the size of the file can be determined because it’s broken into evenly-sized chunks and one file picks up where the previous left off. The cumulative amount of bandwidth used is often a clue.