Google VPN Protection Now Available to All Paid ‘Google One’ Subscribers

While Apple includes numerous privacy protection features in iOS and macOS – such as iCloud Private Relay, which hides your IP address in Safari and protects your unencrypted browser traffic – neither operating system includes a VPN by default.

On the other hand, if you’re a paid ‘Google One’ subscriber, you can soon take advantage of the search giant’s VPN to keep your online travels undercover.

Google has announced that its VPN by ‘Google One’ protective feature will now be available to all paying ‘Google One’ subscribers, including the lowest-priced $1.99 per month Basic plan. Previously, the VPN service was limited to Premium (2TB) Google One subscribers.

VPN by ‘Google One’ Availability

The VPN by Google One feature is available in the following countries:

• United States
• United Kingdom
• Taiwan
• Switzerland
• Sweden
• Spain
• South Korea
• Norway
• Netherlands
• Mexico
• Japan
• Italy
• Ireland
• Iceland
• Germany
• France
• Finland
• Denmark
• Canada
• Belgium
• Austria
• Australia

‘Google One’ users that have the VPN turned on and that are living in or visiting a country listed above, will still be able to use VPN by ‘Google One ‘when they travel to other countries or regions.

What Does a VPN Do?

Here’s a small primer for my readers that are not familiar with what a VPN is and does.

TL;DR, a VPN hides your online activities from anyone looking to monitor your online usage, while also spoofing your physical location.

A VPN encrypts your internet connection, which hides your online travels from anyone else, including your ISP, the government, hackers, and other nosy types.

A VPN also temporarily assigns a new IP address to your smartphone, computer, or other internet-capable devices. Since IP addresses can be used to determine a user’s geographical location, a new IP address helps hide a user’s true location. For instance, if you’re located in Chicago, Illinois in the United States and you connect to a VPN server in Sweden, the rest of the internet will think you’re actually located inside of Sweden.

‘Google One’ Dark Web Monitoring

Google has also unveiled a new feature that will monitor for exposure of users’ personal information on the dark web. The feature keeps an eye on the dark web for any exposure of your personal information — including your name, address, Social Security number, email, and phone number — and will alert you if there is an exposure.

If Google finds any of your information on the dark web, it will alert you and give guidance on how you might best protect the breached information. If, for example, your Social Security number is discovered on the dark web, Google might suggest reporting it as stolen to the government or taking steps to monitor and protect your credit.

Google One’s dark web report will also let you know about any other bits of your information that was found in a data breach. Google says all information will be handled according to its privacy policy and the info can be deleted from your profile, and you can stop dark web monitoring at any time.

Dark web report will begin rolling out to Google One members in the U.S. over the next few weeks.

‘Google One’ Pricing

Pay-for-play Google One pricing begins at $1.99 per month (or $19.99 per year) for 100GB of storage. A $2.99 per month (or $29.99 per year) 200GB plan and a $9.99 per month (or $99.99 per year) 2TB plan. Google also offers a free service tier with 15GB of data storage but that plan does not include the VPN service as a part of the deal.

This story first appeared on Mactrast.com