State College, Pennsylvania is a home rule municipality located in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The statistical area has a population of approximately 236k. As you might be able to guess, it is the home of Penn State University. Most of the borough consists of University Park, and it is effectively built around the college. Whether you are visiting the area for a weekend or a number of years, there is a good chance that you’ll use public WiFi at some point. Before you do that, you’ll want to connect to a VPN first. We’ll explain more about that in a moment. However, we can provide you with our list of the best VPNs for State College.
| Rank | VPN Service | Our Score | Server Locations | Visit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  | 9.8 | 160 |  |
| 2 |  | 9.2 | 80 | |
| 3 |  | 9.0 | 76 | |
The village of State College grew into a town to meet the needs of Penn State University. Originally, settlers founded it as “Farmers’ High School of Pennsylvania” in 1855. That said, it incorporated in 1896 as State College, and has grown ever since. Interestingly enough, the president of the school tried to get the name changed in 1953. However, the name stayed the same due to the lack of better choices. It is not hard to guess that the biggest employer in town by quite a margin is Penn State University.
Beaver Stadium is the home of the Penn State Nittany Lions. It holds 106k people and has a Kentucky Bluegrass field. Football brings in quite a bit of money to the school and the team has won almost 69% of their games since 1887.
No matter what your reasons are for the city, the chances are you will have some downtime. Fortunately, there are a number of businesses offer free WiFi to their customers. Before you connect to one of those, though, you need to use a VPN. That is because cybercriminals can easily gain access to your private information otherwise. You can bet there is always someone lurking about, just waiting to find a vulnerable target. When you use a VPN, you create a secure and private connection to the server of your choice. That makes it much more difficult for cybercrooks to steal your steal your data.
The next reason to use a VPN is to help you get around geo-restrictions. We’ll explain that a bit with an example. If you want to go to a football game but can’t get tickets, that can be a problem. You could always go to a bar or you could watch it online (if you do not have a cable or satellite subscription). However, you will encounter a blackout because of licensing rights. By using a VPN, you can connect to a server in a different area. That stops the detection software from blocking out your area. That way, you can enjoy the game like you normally would online.
Here is another example. If you try to use WiFi at the school, there is a good chance they will block you from accessing some of the sites you would normally enjoy. That is due to the school’s firewall. Those are common in schools, businesses, and even some countries. The VPN will help you get around those restrictions, too. Now you see why it is important, let’s look at a few of the best choices.
1. Best VPN for State College: ExpressVPN
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Of course, you can find sports fans all over the world. Because different events interest different people, you can expect strong regional support where the event takes place. What you can not always expect, however, is to be able to watch it if you are outside the area. The idea is to connect to a VPN server from ExpressVPN. As long as you connect to one in the area of the sporting event, you will be able to watch the local broadcast. Just make sure you have an account for one of the streaming options for the event.
2. Best VPN for State College: CyberGhost
If you are a gamer, one of the things you can avoid by connecting a VPN server from CyberGhost is what is known as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. If you are not aware, a DDoS attack makes a machine or network unavailable by flooding it with requests in an attempt to overload systems. You should not have to worry about attackers or botnets stopping you from playing your favorite games. When you connect to a VPN, though, it will help you prevent that from happening.
3. Best VPN for State College: IPVanish
If you are looking for a service with a few encryption protocols, IPVanish has you covered. Those include IKEv2, L2TP/IPSec, and OpenVPN (still considered to be the gold standard in the community). While those are all excellent options to choose from, IKEv2 is very popular these days. The experts consider it to be what is known as an NGE (Next Generation Encryption) protocol. That means you can count on it to provide you with a healthy level of safety and security. It is especially helpful for mobile devices.
