5 lessons 'Doctor Who' can teach you about a VPN

For over 50 years and over the span of 12 Doctors, Doctor Who has taught viewers important life lessons, and most importantly, to expect the unexpected. We find relevance in these lessons, especially when it comes to the Doctor’s concern of safety for all humankind. These five lessons will help you understand why everyone should use a VPN and take just as good of care of their online data as the Doctor does with his companions.

1) BEING TOO IMMERSED IN TECHNOLOGY CAN MAKE US VULNERABLE.

As evidenced in season 7, episode 6 “The Bells of St. John” with the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith), being immersed in technology can have dangerous effects if you are not protected. Obviously we don’t mean that your soul will be uploaded to the Cloud when you log on to a certain Wi-Fi network, but this is a hyperbolized metaphor of what could actually happen.

If you are surfing the web on a public Wi-Fi network, anyone else on that network is able to see what you are looking at, and, if they dig a little deeper, are also able to see personal information stored on your computer. If they wanted, they could easily steal your identity and gather a lot of other private information. However, if you were to use a VPN in order to encrypt all of your data and remain anonymous on public Wi-Fi, your personal information would be unrecognizable to third parties. Even though Cybermen (from season 2) and the Great Intelligence (season 7) do not exist, cyber threats do, and it is Strong’s duty to protect users from each and every one, leaving you and your information safe from harm.

2) IT IS POSSIBLE TO BE INVISIBLE.

Just like how the Doctor’s multipurpose time machine, the TARDIS, can cloak its appearance with a perception filter, a VPN can cloak your identity and browsing habits. The Doctor uses a piece of technology called a Chameleon circuit in order to cloak his space ship so that it appears as an ordinary object to those around it — its preferred cloak is of the infamous 1960’s blue police call box. The use of this cloaking device protects the TARDIS and those inside of it, because everyday passersby do not pay any attention to it, and those who want to cause harm are unable to locate it due to its ordinary appearance.

While a VPN can’t make your data disappear, it can alter it so that it cannot be decoded by just anyone hopping onto your network. By using up to 2048-bit encryption, StrongVPN is able to cloak whatever data is being sent through its tunnels, making the data indistinguishable to third parties.

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3) THE MOST AMAZING THINGS COME IN SMALL PACKAGES.

The Doctor wouldn’t be *the Doctor* if it weren’t for his handy-dandy sonic screwdriver by his side! The sonic screwdriver was designed to help with just about any problem, from unlocking doors to scanning bodies for medical applications, and much of what the Doctor does would be impossible without the tool. Just like how the sonic screwdriver is versatile in its functionality, so is a VPN.

A VPN can be used for multiple things including unlocking geo-restricted content, preventing ISP data throttling, keeping your identity and data safe from harm, and more! Essentially, both a VPN and sonic screwdriver have the same purpose: to unlock blocked passageways or gain access to restricted content, and to protect you from bodily harm or protect all programs that access the Internet on a computer. Who knew that such tiny pieces of technology could help us so much?

4) KNOWLEDGE CAN MAKE YOU A POWERFUL PERSON.

Obviously no one has 900+ years of expansive and out-of-this-world knowledge like the Doctor, but we do know one thing: remaining ignorant to cyber threats can cause great harm! There are plenty of hackers out there just waiting to get their hands on your information, so don’t feed into their plan.

Knowing about the threats to your privacy is the first step, and the second is obtaining a VPN to protect yourself. By adding a new network interface to programs that access the Internet on your computer, a VPN is able to stop hackers in their tracks and prevent them from seeing any potentially important or sensitive information stored on the computer. We may not know as much as the Doctor, but we know enough to say that no one is safe from spying eyes on the Internet, and that using a VPN for protection is the best choice.

5) NEVER LOSE YOUR VALUABLES.

Unlike the Twelfth Doctor (Peter Capaldi), who loses his sonic screwdriver to the creator of the Daleks, we want our users to have the peace of mind that their valuable information will not fall into the wrong hands. It is very dangerous when such powerful tools are used by those who intend to cause harm, so keep unwanted spying eyes out of your information with a VPN.

If you use a password manager in addition to a VPN, your information will be almost impossible to breach. Using password managers helps keep all of your login information stored in one easy-to-access place so that you will never have to click “forgot password” again! With the combined encryption methods of both a password manager and a VPN, the barrier protecting your data will be almost impenetrable.

Hopefully you Whovians out there will take the Doctor’s advice and remain safe from cyber harm — he is every kind of scientist, after all. We know this isn’t nearly as big a victory as saving the universe, but perhaps we may end up doing so one day by protecting one individual at a time! Be sure to catch up on all your favorite Doctor Who episodes on either Hulu or Netflix, and watch the latest series of Doctor Who on the BBC iPlayer!

(Thanks to StrongVPN)