Featured Image Credit: Karl Rock / YouTube
Topics: Real Life
You have probably seen advert for VPNs everywhere as the service becomes more and more popular. Virtual Private Networks link your internet to a server in another country so that you can visit websites as if you were in the region. This can be useful for a number of reasons. Many use VPNs simply because of privacy concerns as a number of companies track all of your data and locations.
Despite this, VPNs aren't particularly a necessity here in the UK, as we have access to the vast majority of websites and services the internet has to offer. This isn't the case for all countries. China is infamous for its firewall which blocks a huge number of foreign websites including any and all Google products.
On a lighter note have a look at these working cats taking part in game development in our video.
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Traditional countries also block a lot of websites from the average citizen. Anything which could be considered "dubious" is often blocked in various countries all across Asia. The country explored by YouTuber Karl Rock, whose channel exposes scams around the world, is the UAE, where any website or service allowing calls are blocked.
The idea behind this is that the main phone companies want to hold a monopoly over the expensive international calling market, and as such the government is helping them out. Tourists are obviously eager to contact their friends and family back home and as such black market VPN sellers began popping up everywhere in the major city of Dubai.
Selling a month's worth of usage from a VPN network, you can buy these coupons for as little as $1, which have a code you are then supposed to enter into an app. Rock buys a few to test out and what you think will happen definitely does. While the server does appear to be real, the codes don't work and everyone trying out the app attests to that in reviews.
Not only this, but the service could then be stealing your data, storing, and selling it, which goes precisely against the main reason people purchase a VPN in the first place. The moral of the story is basically if you think something looks very dodgy, it probably is.