Excessive consumerism has certainly damaged our planet immeasurably over the last two hundred years. In 2023 alone, 28.3 million hectares of tree cover disappeared. But despite such news, many of us do our best to leave the world a better place than we found it and do our bit for the environment.
But sadly, for many of us, the good work done by conscientious recycling and green practices is easily outweighed by those who, say, buy a new car every three years, regularly fly on kerosene-consuming airplanes, purchase clothes from labor-exploiting manufacturers, and engage in all manner of poor practices.
A Secret Ecological Weapon
Every little helps save the planet one kilowatt at a time, and a device that can help reduce time spent on your laptop or phone is known as a virtual private network (VPN)— in effect, a free VPN.
A VPN saves time when you’re on the internet on any device because it can:
- Speed up your connection.
- It allows you to find goods and services quickly without distracting advertisements.
- It lets you avoid dynamic pricing quirks and purchase what you need faster.
VPNs work by placing an intermediary server between your device and the internet service requested. The VPN server is encrypted, concealing your location during that web session and cloaking your identity.
Technology for the Environment – A Double-Edged Sword
Many people now look to AI and new tech to find a panacea for all this consumption. Everyone must be hoping that one day, an AI model will work out a way to turn all greenhouse gases into effective fertilizers or that car exhaust fumes will be nothing other than water, and solar power can provide all the world’s energy needs at a stroke.
In its early stages, the new tech uses vast electricity to train AI and power data centers. People using social media to protest is also a very energy-heavy activity. It’s all cool, and right on to post a load of images on Facebook of the climate crisis demonstration you just attended.
Still, the world is being filled with carbon dioxide at an ever-increasing rate due to all the power required to run social media servers, which is one of the reasons for the VPN boom: they save energy.
Dynamic Pricing Shenanigans
Try this for yourself. Call a friend in a different state or country and ask them to use their laptop or desktop computer and a phone to look up the price of some particular vacation rental. Agree on a given property, log into your accounts, and enter identical dates to try booking the same place. Then log out and try again. Then clear your cache and cookies and repeat the exercise.
You might be surprised to learn that you are offered up to eight different prices every time you visit the site.
That’s because the AI in these flight and accommodation reseller sites offers you prices based on the device you’re using, where you are, and your spending history with that website. Clearly, if you saw the accommodation or flight that suited you at the right price, you could book it on the spot and spend the rest of the day doing something productive.
But these sites’ job is to keep you trawling for the perfect destination, hotel, or restaurant, so you spend exhausting hours going in circles. The trick is to use a VPN, thus defeating those divisive algorithms and getting the best ‘base price’ possible for any online purchase, all while saving time and energy—not least your own.
Backing off the throttle
Some internet service providers (ISPs) penalize households that use excessive amounts of data to encourage them to upgrade to a more expensive data transfer package. This is particularly true for customers using 4G or 5G connections when gaming, streaming, or using a lot of bandwidth when working from home.
However, a VPN conceals your identity and location even from your ISP. If your ISP doesn’t recognize your account from your internet protocol address (IP address), it can’t ‘throttle’ or slow down your connection speed.
It’s also essential to find the things you need online quickly. If all website owners properly optimized their search engine parameters using, for example, the Orca extension, you’d probably find what you were seeking online a lot quicker.
In summary
In the final analysis, less time spent on social media, online shopping, and using the internet is probably good for your mental health, as well as using less electricity to feed a screen addiction. A VPN can help minimize online time, but looking after security is essential.
For example, if you’re a student involved in any political activism to help change the planet for the better, don’t be too surprised if governmental agencies log your online activities. It sounds far-fetched, but it’s more common than you might expect.
A VPN also cloaks your web activity from ISPs, who are sometimes given legal orders to keep logs of people’s activities if the government regard them as ‘of interest’ – you don’t have to be a leading politician or rock star to get your email and socials hacked – it can happen to anyone. Using a VPN adds an extra layer of security.
But don’t have nightmares about all this stuff, just keep fighting for the planet, reduce your screen time, and think about how much energy your devices are using next time you post that crazy cat video.
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