ABUJA — The Nigeria Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed recently warned Nigerians against using the Virtual Private Network (VPN), saying that it exposes user’s “data” to danger, including bank details.
The position of the minister may look ridiculous to the tech experts but in reality, many Nigerians may be prone to losing their information to frauds or hackers who will exploit the ignorance of the VPN user to carry out fraudulent crimes.
Ironically, the Minister of Information did not tell Nigerians that VPN settings can actually be adjusted to protect user’s data. This may not be unconnected to the fact the government is trying to monopolize information, thus, telling only one side.
Below are the basic steps you need to take to protect your data from being exposed to a third party while using VPN.
Go to your VPN settings, click on Selection, On your Split Tunneling, then select apps, such as your banks’ apps, etc you will like to be split from the virtual network.
Many Nigerians have been using VPN since the government suspended the use of Twitter in the country. The microblogging was suspended after it deleted a tweet from President Muhammadu Buhari and suspended the Nigeria President for 12-hour.
President Buhari in his tweet threatened to treat some Nigerians considered “misbehaving” in “the language they understand,” referencing the civil war. The tweet was reported multiple times and the social media giant took the action based on its guidelines, stated on its pages.
