Everyone’s waiting on The Man With The Bag, but Santa Claus might want a little more privacy than is usually allowed for him this time of year.
A virtual private network (VPN), works by masking your internet connection, hiding your IP address, location, and browsing history, offering an added layer of protection while also allowing users to access sites that may be blocked. Additionally, if the VPN provider has servers in multiple different countries, this allows users to spoof their location to any of these servers, allowing them to unlock content from that country. This includes geo-locked content like news articles or streaming services.
You might be wondering what appeal a VPN would hold for Saint Nick, but read on to discover why Santa Claus needs a VPN—and so do you!
To hide his location
He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, but Jolly Old Saint Nick might not want the same treatment. With NORAD tracking Santa every year, he should really hide his location using the IP-masking features of a VPN. Once the VPN is in use, Santa Claus and his browsing history will remain completely untraceable.
Additionally, if Father Christmas feels like playing a trick on NORAD or any other people attempting to track him, he can spoof his location to wherever his VPN provider has a server, allowing him to virtually hop across the globe in a matter of seconds—almost as quickly as he travels in real life!
For us non-magical beings, these features can be used to hide your location and browsing habits, keeping you firmly off the naughty list for another year. With the encryption offered by a VPN, not even the government can see your internet traffic.
Increasing internet speed
Researchers at the University of Leicester worked out that Santa Claus would have to travel at 1.56 x 106 meters per second, or about 0.5% the speed of light in order to bring presents to everyone on the nice list on Christmas Eve. As a man who knows the true meaning of spread, surely he’d want his internet speeds to match.
While a VPN may not necessarily help boost his internet connection speeds quite this much, VPNs can help in this area, allowing him to carry on surfing the web at a speed he’s more accustomed to. VPNs do this by circumventing throttling by internet service providers, meaning that both you and Santa Claus can enjoy quick, uninterrupted internet connections.
For better downtime in the sleigh
While Christmas Eve is the biggest day for Father Christmas, even he deserves to take a break while traveling between countries. However, if he wants to stream his favorite movies or TV shows, he’s going to need a VPN to do so!
Since Santa is traveling across the world, he’ll need one with a large amount of servers in many different countries to allow him to access the catalog of the streaming service he wants, in the country he wants to watch it in.
Luckily for him, many VPN providers offer a great range of servers in many different countries, allowing him to watch whatever content he wishes.
To protect his sleigh from Grinches
Just because Father Christmas is out to spread joy, doesn’t mean that everyone is. For those firmly on the naughty list, Christmas is a time for trying to take advantage of others.
If Santa Claus' device gets infected with malware, who knows the impact it will have on Christmas! Luckily, while VPNs themselves do not protect against malicious software, many VPNs offer antivirus or antimalware in addition to their VPN services. By choosing a VPN with these features, Father Christmas can stop hackers from stealing Christmas—or his data!
The best VPN in 2023
Now that I’ve laid out why Santa needs a VPN, it’s time to give him some recommendations. Below are my top three VPNs and what makes them a good choice for both you and Father Christmas.
