The privacy situation is getting worse everywhere in the world. The UK, especially, is a part of the UKUSA, which is an agreement between 5 countries to share domestic surveillance intelligence with each other.

In these state of affairs, UK citizens have to take measures into their own hands if they want to stay safe from state-sponsored privacy violations courtesy of agencies in the UK.

The easiest way to improve your online privacy is to use a reliable VPN free for use. But how exactly can it protect you from surveillance and what is the extent of this problem in the UK?

Surveillance in the UK

The government in the UK passed the Investigatory Powers Act in 2016. This bill authorizes agencies in the UK, such as the GCHQ, to perform wide-ranging surveillance on British citizens without their consent.

A free VPN for UK can help to protect you from agencies tracking you online by masking your IP address. Since your IP is a unique number that can be used to identify you throughout the web, a false IP can make it really difficult for any agency to keep a track of your activities throughout the web.

That’s one of the main mechanisms of a VPN and this is how it manages to make your overall online presence more private than it would be if you were surfing the internet without the protection of any VPN at all.

But there are more reasons to use a VPN in the UK.

Torrenting Restrictions

The UK has one of the toughest anti-piracy laws in the world. You can get a maximum of 10 years in jail if caught downloading copyrighted files through torrents. Although copyright infringement is a serious crime, people should be able to access files for private use as long as they don’t intend to make a profit off of it.

So, if you don’t have any nefarious designs in mind when downloading torrents, you should go ahead. Unfortunately, authorities in the UK monitor torrenting traffic quite closely. So, it’s best to avoid being in their radar, even if you’re acting completely within the bounds of legality.

This where a VPN’s IP-masking magic comes into play again. If authorities don’t know your really IP address, it won’t be so easy to figure out other details about you.

Conclusion

Staying private on the internet is becoming more and more difficult with the passage of time. In countries with state-sponsored surveillance programs like the UK, this is a serious issue. Thankfully, the situation isn’t entirely hopeless and you can still guard your privacy with tools like VPNs.