captain sparkle wrote:
I've never used one myself, wouldn't know where to start (in terms of reliability, security & actual "does it work" capability)
Could anyone recommend such a product, purely for an extra home security precautionary measure, of course?
If you do internet banking or on-line shopping over hotel or similar Wi-Fi's you DEFINITELY should run a VPN for additional security. On a home network it is still not a bad idea, although the risk of information being intercepted and hacked is much less.
I use Nord VPN is currently £58.46 for two years, but has a one month trial. I've had Nord for a few years now and find it generally fast & reliable. Occasionally it slows down, but then simply disconnect & reconnect, it will choose a faster server.
Nord also has something called 'double VPN', which some people sometimes find useful.
https://nordvpn.com/Cyberghost gets good reviews and also has double VPN. It is slightly cheaper than Nord but I've never used it.
https://www.cyberghostvpn.com/en_US/There are 'free' VPN's out there, but they tend to be slow in comparison to paid for ones. Obviously, for internet banking, speed isn't an issue, but then it comes down to 'trust'. I've never been happy sending my information through a 'free' service, when I don't really know who is ultimately behind it.