Maximum PC

I'm not very familiar with VPNs, but I've been hearing that you should use them when you're in a public network like Starbucks etc. So now I'm using Hamachi but when everything is all set and configured, I get the feeling that I'm no safer than when I'm not using the VPN. How do I make sure that I'm actually secured by the VPN?

well you can hit win+r and type cmd

then type netstat -n

you should see something like this



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so in my case you can see the DHCP address the wireless router provided connected back to my openvpn server

then a bunch of connections to 192.168.3.6 (openvpn address)

you need to be sure you configure your vpn correctly for the purpose in my case for example openvpn doesn't by default route everything thru the vpn you have to push the redirect gateway directive to route web traffic thru the tunnel.

I'm not super familiar with your vpn solution so you need to double check if it redirects everything by default or if you need to configure it to do so.

while you won't see a difference (hopefully) using the web over the vpn the security benefit is that everything you are browsing at the public hotspot will be encrypted back to the vpn server so if anyone was trying to eavesdrop on the public wifi they would just be seeing the encrypted traffic with no real way of telling what the heck it is, where as without the vpn they could capture everything you are browsing, and steal passwords ..etc...

Sorry for this super late reply. I sort of gave up on this topic after no responses and haven't checked till now.

So are VPNs suppose to change your ip address? I mean I've been using Hotspot shield for a while now and I know that whenever I on that it changes my ip to something else. When I'm on Hamachi, my ip stays the same.