So I’ve just moved to London for a new job at a school, and the restrictions here are quite dreadful. I love videogames so it was awful to see that any content tagged as “games” was immediately blocked by the school server. No Twitch, Steam, Itchio or even any gaming news outlet. I started considering going back to France, but I tried a VPN on a whim and… it’s perfect?
It honestly seems a bit too good to be true. I’ve been using computers my whole life so I’m used to how everything works, but I’ve never needed a VPN so this is all very new to me. I just can’t understand why something that good - bypassing school restrictions and just giving me access to what I want - would just be there, and free. Be honest guys, is there a catch? Crappy speed once the trial version is over, a limited bandwidth, a limited time per day?
The only “catch” is that you may be violating your school’s Acceptable Use policy, which may result in sanctions or even dismissal, depending how big a violation they deem circumventing firewall blocks to be.
Let’s be honest, free services are there to either make money of your data or get you to subscribe to the paid service. In this case I strongly believe it is the latter. That being said, I’ve been a paid subscriber for over a year and quite happy with that choice.
I’m just a punter I have no experience in programming/computing, I only have a limited understanding of tech-security although I have some techie friends.
The first benefit is that apparently ProtonMail dosn’t harvest and exploit your data like other email providers do. You have to pay for more functions for your inbox although perhaps that’s to be expected in a world of “if you don’t pay you’re the product”. I do believe that the free service is probably safer and more secure than other email providers.
The second benefit is the layer of pgp encryption (although that only holds when you’re emailing another pgp encrypted service) and that only captures the text and not the subject line or any attachments.
I think I understand that pgp encryption is secure so I don’t understand Tutanota, who apparently have their own encryption standards, although as I say I’m not techie.
In terms of the VPN… I suppose there are a number of VPN services out there so it depends on whether you’re down with the ethos of ProtonMail as they are the same company.
Thank you for the warning. I will definitely need to check this out. Since I’m part of the staff, I like to think that it should be alright for me to access such things - especially since I’m only accessing them in my free time, obviously - but it seems a lot like wishful thinking!
Schools in the UK are a very highly controlled environment, all to do with child safeguarding, and of course this includes their data networks. Some have stricter policies than others, e.g. some schools may have it in their policy that you cannot access social media not even in your free time, others may be more permissive in that respect. The rules do apply to staff as well (there are different policies for staff and for students, of course), so do make sure you are playing by them so as not to actually have to go back to France
