Shadowing Practice: I was wrong about VPNs - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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The Internet says VPNs are completely useless.
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They might be right.
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Or are they?
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In this video, we're busting some myths.
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Can a VPN protect you from hackers?
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Does it make you invisible?
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Oh. The goal here is to help you answer this question for yourself.
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Do you actually need a VPN?
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Get your coffee ready.
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We're turning on our virtual private network.
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That's what VPN stands for, by the way.
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When you are enabling a VPN, you are connecting to a virtual private network.
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What does that mean?
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We'll cover that.
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But for most people, VPN simply means privacy.
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Protecting you on public Wi Fi from hackers.
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It's a magic pill, a warm blanket for security.
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And how do most people know that?
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Well, VPN companies are great at marketing.
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They sponsor YouTubers like crazy.
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And it just so happens that, this video is sponsored by NordVPN.
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Hold up. Don't click away.
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I get it. What a conflict of interest.
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Right? But hear me out.
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I'm not gonna hold back.
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In fact, because I'm sponsored by a VPN, I have to be extra harsh to have any shred of dignity left.
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You know what?
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You can grade me at the end of the video.
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Scale of one to 10.
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One, I'm a trash goblin that sold out.
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10, I don't know.
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I'm a good boy.
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You have to like, subscribe, comment.
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Deal? Alright.
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We're all gonna be okay.
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Are you ready for myth number one?
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Let's go. HTTPS already encrypts traffic, so VPNs basically do nothing.
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Right? This is the biggest argument against VPNs.
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It's a good one.
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Let's break it down.
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First, what type of VPN?
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Because there are commonly two types, and not everyone knows this.
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In this video, we're talking about personal VPNs, like NordVPN, but not the VPN that your company might provide you to securely connect to their stuff.
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So we're not talking about this one even though they do kind of work in a similar way.
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For a personal VPN, the promise is that when you turn it on, it will encrypt or hide all of your Internet traffic.
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So let's say, for example, when I visit academy.networkchuck.com.
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Without a VPN, the idea is that if someone can get in the middle of this traffic, sniff it, they can see everything I'm doing, which by the way is not a hard thing to do.
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I made a video about that here.
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So if I pay for a course, you might be able to sniff up my credit card information, my email, my password, whatever I'm doing.
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But if we turn on a VPN, they suddenly can't smell anything.
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Took that analogy too far.
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No. It still works.
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Never chucked a coffee.
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By the way, what are you drinking today?
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Doesn't have to be coffee, but it helps.
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Let's do a simultaneous sip.
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Instead of going directly to the website, we'll form what's called a VPN tunnel with a VPN server.
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And in our case, it'll be one of NordVPN servers.
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This is a secure encrypted tunnel, meaning that all the traffic that the hacker might normally see, it's locked up.
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It's unreadable, unsmellable, unsniffable.
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In fact, his nose has stopped up.
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Yeah. We went too far.
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I felt it. I felt it.
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This is the toughest analogy I've ever made.
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It's fun, though.
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And when I'm visiting academy.networkchuck.com, the Internet is seeing NordVPN's network and not my network.
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A VPN simply just changes the network you appear to be on.
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This is cool, but here's the thing.
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This worked great for HTTP.
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It was necessary with HTTP, but now most websites, including academy.networkchuck.com, they use HTTPS.
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The s stands for secure, encrypted using TLS or transport layer security.
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This means that without a VPN let's get NordVPN out of here.
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This means that without a VPN, when I connect to a website using HTTPS, it's encrypted.
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The hacker still has a stuff nose.
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So does that mean the VPN is essentially doing nothing?
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Not exactly.
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You see, HTTPS, it's not hiding everything.
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It's encrypting your traffic.
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A 100%. Well, I don't wanna say that.
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For example, it's not hiding the sites that you visit or how often.
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Let me unstuff his nose here.
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The hacker and your ISP can sniff the fact that you visited academy.networkchuck.com 10 times in the last hour along with any other website you visit, creating a fun little profile on you for advertisers.
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Isn't that fun?
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Don't you love being tracked?
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Don't believe me?
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Watch this.
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I've got a little hacking lab sitting here.
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Kali Linux is sniffing all the traffic from this machine here, my Ubuntu machine.
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Let's go visit a few websites.
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I'm gonna launch, Wireshark and Kali Linux.
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This is what hackers use to sniff stuff.
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Let's take a look at Ethernet one.
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We'll start sniffing.
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Over here, we'll go to academy.networkchuck.com.
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Stop capture.
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Filter off DNS.
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Let's find the packet.
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Let's search for networkchuck.
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There it is.
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Do you see it?
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Academy.networkchuck right there.
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Totally sniffable.
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But I could see you typing in the comments already.
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You're like, Chuck, what about secure DNS?
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DNS over HTTPS.
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Yeah. That will encrypt this information.
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And in theory, it should hide this information from hackers sniffing your stuff and your ISP.
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In theory, let's try it out.
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I saw David Bombal do this in his video, this one here.
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Check it out.
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It's pretty good, but watch this.
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We'll go over here, we'll enable secure DNS.
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Boop. And we'll use Google.
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Let's start capturing again, and we'll go to, like, I don't know, cisco.com, microsoft.com.
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Let's go see what we found.
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Now it looks like we didn't find any DNS packets, but let's try this.
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Look at that.
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This is so crazy.
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That looks like DNS to me.
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That doesn't it?
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Easy for me to say the SNI gave us away, and you're like, what is that?
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Not gonna dive deep into that right now.
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Go watch David's video.
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The point is even with secure modern standards, we're not getting the anonymity and privacy we want, and this is where a VPN shines.
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Because when you connect back to NordVPN, all that traffic from HTTPS, all your web traffic, your DNS queries, and also everything else your computer's doing.
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It's not just your web browser talking to the Internet.
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You get all your apps and your games constantly talking to other servers on the Internet.
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You don't even know what they're doing if they're secure.
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Alright. Fresh capture.
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VPN on. We'll go to academy.merch.networkchuck.com.
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Easy for me to say.
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Cisco.com. Go to networkchuck.coffee, and let's see what we find.
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Nothing with Cisco.
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Nothing with network chuck.
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Everything and notice the protocol here.
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Everything is WireGuard, which is what NordVPN uses to secure you.
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Connecting to a VPN encrypts all of that.
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And now we've given our hacker and our ISP a stuffy nose again.
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I think we can say that myth is busted.
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Boom. Hold up.
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Can't NordVPN see all of our stuff?
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Yes. And that's myth number two.
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A VPN just shifts your trust from the ISP to the VPN company, and most of the companies don't deserve it.
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Let's pop the hood on that.
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And honestly, this might be the strongest argument against using a VPN because we may be able to hide all of our traffic from hackers in our ISP, but that involves putting all of our trust in the VPN provider.
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PureVPN said no logs, meaning they don't keep track of what we do when we visit websites.
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They don't have a record of it.
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Yet their logs that don't exist helped unmask a net stalker.
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Now while I agree that's a good thing that happened, still, come on guys.
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You said no logs, but hear me out on this.
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Dishonest providers doesn't necessarily mean the tool is useless, but you do have to verify who you're trusting.
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And when it comes to the Internet, you're gonna be trusting someone.
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So I do actually use NordVPN a lot, and they claim no logs like a bunch of other companies do.
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So why do I trust them?
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Well, they just passed the sixth audit on their no logs assessment, and this is an independent audit, not them checking themselves.
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And by the way, as I'm naming this stuff off, it doesn't have to be NordVPN.
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It can be you using this criteria for your VPN.
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Check it. Also, NordVPN uses RAM based servers, which means no disc or database to seize or give over to law enforcement.
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And then jurisdiction's a big one.
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NordVPN is in Panama or they're under the jurisdiction of Panama.
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This is important for us because there's no mandatory data retention law in Panama, and they don't need to store logs.
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Can I prove any of that?
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No. At the end of the day, it comes down to trust.
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NordVPN has given me enough reasons to trust them with my VPN access, and you'll have to answer that for yourself with whatever provider you choose.
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Myth number three, a VPN makes you invisible.
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I'll go ahead and bust this one.
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No. It doesn't make you invisible.
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And this one you kinda already know.
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Right? Like, a VPN can make you feel more secure.
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It can make you a little bit more private, but it can never ever make you fully invisible.
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Remember, it just changes the network you appear to be on, but we're not Harry Potter here.
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No invisibility cloak.
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Well, let's see them.
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Put it on. Woah.
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You know, I'm gonna have at least one Harry Potter reference in this video.
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You know this.
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Think about incognito mode.
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When you turn that on in your browser, you kinda feel like a hacker.
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Right? Like, no one can see me.
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All that's doing is not saving your browser history on your computer.
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It doesn't mean that the stuff you visit isn't looked at upstream.
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And a VPN is kind of the same energy.
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Like, it'll hide your IP address, but your IP is like 5% of how you actually get tracked.
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If you're still logged into Google, cookies are still following you around.
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And the big one, browser fingerprinting, your screen size, your fonts, your extensions.
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There's a big thing about LinkedIn looking at all your extensions recently.
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It adds up to a fingerprint that's essentially you, and you don't need an IP address to know that.
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Actually, I'm curious.
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There's this website.
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We can test this out right now.
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Cover your tracks.
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I'm gonna test my browser.
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Oh, this is fun.
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I am not protected, it says.
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Myth three, busted.
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Easy. Myth number four, a VPN keeps you safe from hackers.
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Yeah. This gets into weird territory because that's kind of the advertisement.
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Right? This is the promise.
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Turn on a VPN and the cartoon hacker can't touch you.
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A VPN alone will not protect you from the stuff that actually gets people.
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It's the phishing emails.
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It's the fake shopping sites.
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That extra RAM you tried to download.
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A VPN essentially does nothing about any of that.
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Remember, a VPN just changes what network you appear to be on.
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It builds an encrypted tunnel, but the tunnel's job ends the second your traffic leaves it or the second you click the wrong link.
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The danger was never inside the tunnel.
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The danger is you.
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So, yeah, the myth is busted.
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Now a VPN alone will not protect you from hackers, but NordVPN really isn't just a VPN anymore.
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What they actually are now is kind of an all in one digital security app, and they have next gen antivirus features that help block phishing, malware, trackers, and the stuff that actually gets people hacked.
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Like, let's be honest.
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This guy is used sometimes downloading some images, malware deleted.
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They even have email protection.
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I didn't know that.
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And a crypto wallet address checker.
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How does that work?
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Flag suspicious crypto wallet addresses to keep your transaction secure.
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That's pretty cool.
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Search safety results.
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Oh, dude. They have a URL cleaner built in.
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That's pretty sick.
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Hijacked Session Alert.
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Notifies you if your session cookies are found to be for sale on the Dark Web.
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What? This is the stuff that gets, like, YouTubers hacked.
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Pretty sure this happened to Linus, and it will alert you.
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And, essentially, hackers can avoid having to steal your password by just getting your cookies.
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This is the whole thing.
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Look at this diagram.
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Looks fun. Now, seriously, as far as VPNs go, a NordVPN isn't awesome.
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But the fact that it's more than a VPN is kinda cool because you can still have normal people, not techies like us, turn it on, and they think, oh, yeah.
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VPN is protecting me.
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In this case, it is.
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They just don't know it.
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So trick your family and friends into using a VPN that actually protects them.
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That felt very salesy, but that was a good line, wasn't it?
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Anyways, check out my link in the description below.
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NordVPN did sponsor this video and allowed me to deep dive on VPN stuff.
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They are a massive supporter of my channel, so show them some love.
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I actually use them a lot.
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Now on to myth number five.
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A VPN is just a privacy thing.
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It's all about anonymity and keeping you invisible, which we just talked about, but it's not.
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It's actually an anti harassment tool.
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One thing people know about VPNs, and it's shouted from the the rooftops by, like, every YouTuber ever, is the fact that it hides your IP address.
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Now is that a big deal?
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A lot of people will say it's not, but I say it's stinking is.
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Because in a lot of cases, your IP address points to where you physically are.
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Go ahead. Try it out.
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Go to, like, where what'smyip.com.
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I'm not gonna show you mine because it'll show you where I'm at, but it'll have a pretty good idea of where you're located.
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So whether you're trying to avoid a DDoS attack from a 12 year old with $5 or you're trying to avoid being swatted, being able to change what network you appear to be on also changes what location you appear to be in.
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It goes from a privacy thing to also a protection thing.
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Not to mention while I was in Japan for three months, I used NordVPN all the time to watch my shows back home.
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The geo unblocking alone is fun.
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And I know I know a bunch of these VPNs use shared IP addresses that get blocked.
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That happens to me, which is why a dedicated IP, which is offered by NordVPN and other providers, is super helpful.
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Yeah. You can actually get a dedicated IP address assigned to you.
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You can avoid pop ups that ask you to prove to be be human, avoid those IP blocks.
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Now quick note on dedicated IPs.
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Your traffic is still encrypted, your IP and virtual location are hidden.
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But because a dedicated IP is tied to your Nord account, which is also tied to your email, some activity can be traced back to that Nord account.
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Just be aware of that.
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Myth number six, normal people don't need a VPN.
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And, you know, honestly, a lot of people who don't necessarily care about their privacy online, they're not surfing anything weird.
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They're just visiting Facebook.
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They don't care if their ISP knows that.
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For most people, they don't need a VPN on all the time, but that's the key.
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A lot of those tech nerds, we like to have security all the time.
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We don't like to be tracked or fingerprinted, so we turn on VPN.
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We do all the tricks.
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But for most people, they don't care about that.
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But I still think normal people need a VPN sometimes.
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It's event driven, and these events are kinda multiplying.
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Like in the summer of twenty twenty five, The UK rolls out an age verification law, and overnight, VPN demand explodes.
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So a law flips overnight, or maybe you're traveling and you're on sketchy hotel Wi Fi, or a site you normally visit is geo blocked.
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That's when you reach for a VPN.
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So the answer to do you need a VPN isn't just a flat yes or no.
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I think it's, you know, sometimes you do.
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Probably not right now when you're watching me on YouTube.
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That's HTTPS.
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You may not care if your ISP or or the hacker sniffing your stuff right now knows that you visited YouTube, but you might need it in some of the situations we mentioned.
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So here's the verdict.
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End of the video, we're gonna land this plane.
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What's a VPN actually good for?
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And if you jump to the end of the video right here from the beginning, shame on you.
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Get back there.
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I'm just kidding.
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A little bit.
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So VPN is good for hiding your metadata from an ISP or a hacker, stuffs their nose right up.
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It shifts your trust from your ISP to something you can trust and verify in most cases.
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And with NordVPN, you get more than a VPN.
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You get dedicated IP options, and plus it's an all in one digital security app with next gen antivirus features.
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But what a VPN is not is it's not gonna make you invisible, and it's not gonna magically make you hacker proof.
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You still have to be, you know, smart online.
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You can't just run around without a care.
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You have to have some good cybersecurity hygiene.
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So I wanna hear from you.
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What do you think about VPNs?
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Are you gonna use one?
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Do you use one?
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Comment below.
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Also, how did I do?
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Scale one to 10.
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Be nice. And be extra nice and show NordVPN some love for sponsoring this channel and making a lot of what I do possible.
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They are awesome.
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That's all I got.
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I'll catch you guys next time.
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Hey. You're still here.
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If you're new here, I like to pray for you, my audience, at the end of my videos.
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I believe in the power of prayer, and I genuinely love you guys.
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I wanna see you succeed.
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I wanna see you have a fulfilling life, and I believe the best way I can do that is to pray for you.
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I know it's weird, but let's do it right now.
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One, three, pray.
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God, I thank you for this person on the other side of the screen.
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I thank you for who they are.
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I thank you that they're curious and that they're passionate about tech.
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And I ask in your name that you just bless them indeed right now.
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If they're going through a hard time, whatever it is, give them peace right now.
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Give them courage and encouragement that whatever it is will pass, and I ask that you give them strength to make it through make them yeah.
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To I can't talk right now.
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Give them strength to make it through it, god.
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Bless their careers and their jobs and their families.
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Let them flourish.
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Help them to I ultimately just know you, god.
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In some way, they would know you because I believe that is where we find ultimate joy.
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Help them to take this knowledge that they're learning here to encourage them and and maybe it light a fire in them to jump into cybersecurity or just reignite their fire for what they already do.
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God, I just thank you so much for this person.
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It's in your name I pray, Jesus.
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Amen. Thanks for letting me do that.
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I'll catch you guys next time.
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Context & Background
In the video titled "I was wrong about VPNs," the speaker delves into the common misconceptions surrounding Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). They aim to clarify the purpose of VPNs and how they function in terms of Internet security and privacy. The discussion highlights different types of VPNs, focusing primarily on personal VPNs that encrypt user data. This informative breakdown is crucial for anyone navigating Internet safety, offering insights into whether a VPN is a necessary tool. The speaker utilizes an engaging style, often incorporating humor and direct advice to encourage viewer participation and critical thinking.
Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication
- "Do you actually need a VPN?" - An essential question that prompts reflection on personal online security needs.
- "When you are enabling a VPN." - A straightforward phrase about the action of activating a VPN.
- "It will encrypt or hide all of your Internet traffic." - A vital explanation of what a VPN does.
- "If someone can get in the middle of this traffic." - A common scenario that illustrates the risks of unprotected Internet use.
- "You might be able to sniff up my credit card information." - A practical example of the dangers of cyber threats without a VPN.
Step-by-step Shadowing Guide
To effectively use the shadowing technique based on this video, follow these steps to improve your English pronunciation and overall speaking skills:
- Watch the Video Actively: First, watch the video once without any distractions. Pay attention to the speaker’s tone, speed, and pronunciation.
- Break it Down: Pause the video after each sentence or key phrase. Rewind if necessary to capture the full context.
- Repeat After the Speaker: Use the shadow speech method by mimicking the speaker's words and tone immediately after they say them. This helps with intonation and rhythm.
- Practice with Intent: Choose one of the top phrases listed above. Repeat it several times, focusing on clarity and accuracy.
- Engage in English Speaking Practice: After mastering the phrases, try to create your own sentences using the vocabulary learned. Record yourself to evaluate your progress.
Using this structured approach not only enhances your language skills but also builds confidence in real-world conversations. By consistently applying the shadowing technique, you will find significant improvement in your English speaking abilities. Join the community of learners who are mastering their language through the power of shadowspeaks!
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is sponsored · being tracked · is busted |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has stopped · I've ever made · we've given |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | WireGuard, which is · servers, which means · account, which is |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.