All transmissions
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The Mushroom Was Encryption
In the gaming world mushrooms give you extra life, unlock hidden abilities, or transform your character. In the real-world equivalent of navigating the digital universe, encryption is the mushroom: a small but powerful tool that transforms your security, protects your identity, and opens doors to safe online exploration.
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Notes from the Underground Network
Information flows like electricity, often unseen, but never truly lost. Every packet of data you send travels through a complex network of routers, servers, and exchanges — some secure, some not. For anyone conscious about privacy, the journey your information takes is just as important as the destination.
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The Map Is Not the Territory
In the digital world, what you see is rarely what is. The IP address on your screen, the location tag under your username, the neat little country flag beside your connection — that is the map. But it is not the territory.
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Before You Enter the Warp Pipe
In a world that looks like it booted from a cartridge and runs on pixel power, this is just another tech site — it is your warp zone to digital freedom. Imagine an analog globe spinning in 16-bit color, little Mario-style characters hopping between countries, and secret tunnels labeled “Encrypted.” That is the vibe. Retro. Playful. But with teeth.
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Why Your Bank Hates Your VPN More Than Hackers Do
When you type your password into a banking portal, the data does not travel across the internet as readable text. It is wrapped in a cryptographic envelope before it leaves your device. This process, known as Transport Layer Security, establishes a secure channel between your browser and the bank’s server. The browser…
Read More — Why Your Bank Hates Your VPN More Than Hackers Do
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Does a VPN actually stop your ISP from throttling your connection?
The common advice that a virtual private network resolves all slow-evening video issues relies on a fundamental misunderstanding of how traffic management works. Network operators do not have a single "throttle switch" that slows everything down at once. Instead, they deploy specific rules based on what they can…
Read More — Does a VPN actually stop your ISP from throttling your connection?
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The Tunnel Is Not The Device: Why Phone VPNs Fail Differently
Consider a typical morning. You leave your home, where your phone is connected to a stable Wi-Fi network, and step outside. Within seconds, the operating system detects the loss of the Wi-Fi signal and initiates a handover to cellular data. This is not a single event; it is a continuous process of evaluating signal…
Read More — The Tunnel Is Not The Device: Why Phone VPNs Fail Differently
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The tunnel is not a shield
A virtual private network creates an encrypted pipe between your device and a remote server. This pipe hides the destination of your traffic from your internet service provider and local network observers. It does not inspect the contents of the packets passing through it. The encryption ensures that no one in the…
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The hidden cost of free VPNs: who pays the bill?
A virtual private network creates an encrypted tunnel between your device and a server owned by the provider. This server, known as an exit node, must pay for bandwidth, electricity, and maintenance. These are hard costs that scale with usage. If a service allows ten million users to stream video, the bandwidth bill…
Read More — The hidden cost of free VPNs: who pays the bill?
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The Always-On VPN Fallacy: What You Actually Lose
The advice to leave your virtual private network switched on at all times ignores the fundamental mechanic of how a tunnel works. A VPN does not simply add a layer of security; it reroutes your device’s entire network stack through a remote endpoint. This means your device no longer speaks directly to the local…
Read More — The Always-On VPN Fallacy: What You Actually Lose
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The Public Wi-Fi Myth: Why Your VPN Doesn’t Stop Data Theft
In 2012, connecting to a coffee shop network was a genuine exercise in digital vulnerability. The architecture of the internet at that time relied heavily on plaintext transmission. When you typed a URL into your browser, the request traveled across the local network in clear text. Any device connected to the same…
Read More — The Public Wi-Fi Myth: Why Your VPN Doesn’t Stop Data Theft
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Why Is My VPN So Slow? Work Through It In This Order
Almost nobody has a slow VPN. What they have is a slow path, and the VPN is the most visible thing standing on it. There are four causes worth checking and they are not equally likely, so the order you check them in decides whether this takes five minutes or an evening.
Read More — Why Is My VPN So Slow? Work Through It In This Order
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WireGuard vs OpenVPN: What Actually Differs
Two protocols, one argument, endlessly recycled. WireGuard is the newer one and it wins most benchmarks; OpenVPN is the older one and it survives networks that WireGuard cannot get out of. Both of those things are true at once, which is why the answer depends on what is standing between you and the internet.
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What a DNS Leak Test Is Actually Testing
You run the test, it prints a list of servers, and one of them belongs to your ISP. The page turns red and tells you that you are leaking. It is probably right — but not for the reason the page implies, and the same test goes green in situations where you are still handing your browsing history to somebody you did not choose.
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The Kill Switch Is a Firewall Rule, Not a Panic Button
The name is theatrical and the mechanism is boring, which is the good news: a kill switch is a set of firewall rules that refuse to route packets anywhere except the tunnel. Nothing is being killed. Something is being forbidden. The interesting question is what happens in the moments before the rule is in place.
Read More — The Kill Switch Is a Firewall Rule, Not a Panic Button
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No, a VPN Does Not Make You Anonymous
A VPN moves the observer. That is the whole trick, and it is a genuinely useful trick — the café, the hotel, the ISP and anyone sharing the wire with you stop being able to read the shape of your traffic. What it does not do is make you nobody. You are still logged into things. You still look exactly like yourself.
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Split Tunnelling: Choosing What Goes Through the Pipe
Split tunnelling is the feature that lets you point at an application and say: not you. Everything else goes through the tunnel; that one goes out the front door. It solves real problems — printers, banks, work VPNs, the smart TV — and it introduces one that people rarely notice until it has been true for months.
Read More — Split Tunnelling: Choosing What Goes Through the Pipe
