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Aza Mkansi
- August 7, 2025
By now, many savvy South Africans understand the fundamentals of a VPN. You know that connecting to a service like NordVPN is essential for protecting your personal information on the notoriously insecure public Wi-Fi at your local coffee shop. You’re aware that it’s the key to unlocking a world of entertainment, allowing you to switch your digital location to the US to binge-watch the latest HBO series or to the UK to catch up on BBC iPlayer.
These two functions—unbreakable security and bypassing geo-restrictions—are the powerful one-two punch that makes a VPN a vital tool for modern internet use. But to stop there is to only scratch the surface of what this incredibly versatile technology can do.
Think of your VPN as a digital Swiss Army knife. You might use the main blade every day, but there’s a whole suite of other powerful tools tucked away, ready to solve problems you didn’t even know you had. From saving you thousands of Rands on your next holiday to securing your entire smart home from hackers, a VPN has a range of clever, practical applications that can upgrade nearly every aspect of your digital life.
This guide is for those ready to move beyond the basics. We’re going to pull back the curtain on five of the most powerful “life hacks” that a premium VPN like NordVPN enables. Prepare to see your VPN not just as a privacy shield, but as an essential tool for savings, gaming, and smarter living in 2025.
Clever Use #1: Save Serious Money on Travel and Digital Subscriptions
This is perhaps the most financially rewarding “power-user” trick. Many online companies engage in a practice called price discrimination (or dynamic pricing). This means they show different prices for the exact same product or service to people in different countries, based on their IP address.
It’s a well-known fact that users in wealthier countries are often charged more than users in developing economies. For South Africans, this can work both for and against us. A VPN gives you the power to digitally “shop around the world” to find the best possible price.
The Use Case: Booking a Holiday
Let’s say you’re planning a trip from Johannesburg to Paris.
- The Standard Search: You open your browser and search for flights and hotels. The websites see your South African IP address and show you the price they have determined is appropriate for the SA market.
- The VPN-Powered Search: Now, you close your browser (or open a new incognito window to clear tracking cookies). You open your NordVPN app and connect to a server in a country like Germany, Turkey, or even Mexico. You then perform the exact same search on the same travel websites.
- The Result: You will often find that the prices for the very same flight, hotel room, or car rental are significantly different when quoted in Euros or another currency. When you convert the price back to Rands, the savings can be substantial—often enough to pay for your multi-year VPN subscription several times over from a single trip.
Why does this work? Airlines and booking sites have complex algorithms that factor in local market competition, average income levels, and demand. By changing your digital location, you are changing the inputs to that algorithm, which can result in a more favourable price.
The Use Case: Digital Subscriptions
This same principle applies to many global software and subscription services.
- Streaming Services: The monthly price for services like YouTube Premium or Spotify can vary dramatically between countries.
- Software: A subscription to an international software suite (like Adobe Creative Cloud) might have different regional pricing.
By using your VPN to connect to a server in a country with lower pricing before you sign up, you can often lock in that cheaper rate for the duration of your subscription.
Clever Use #2: Enhance Your Online Gaming Experience
For the millions of passionate gamers across South Africa on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox, a VPN can be a surprisingly powerful tool for improving your gaming sessions.
The Use Case: Potentially Reducing Ping and Lag
“Ping” (or latency) is the time it takes for data to travel from your console or PC to the game server and back. A high ping results in frustrating lag, where your actions in the game are visibly delayed. In South Africa, we are at a geographical disadvantage, as most major game servers are located in Europe or North America.
Normally, your ISP chooses the route your game data takes to get to the server. Sometimes, this route is inefficient, bouncing your traffic through multiple networks, which increases your ping.
A VPN can sometimes offer a more direct route. By connecting to a NordVPN server that is strategically located closer to the game server (e.g., connecting to a Frankfurt server to play on a German game server), the VPN can establish a more direct, less congested path for your data. While it sounds counter-intuitive to add a step, if the VPN’s route is better than your ISP’s default route, you can actually see a reduction in your ping and a more stable, less laggy connection. This is particularly effective with NordVPN’s ultra-fast NordLynx protocol, which is designed for high-speed, low-latency connections.
The Use Case: Early Access to Games and Content
Many games and major updates are released on a rolling basis, often launching in regions like New Zealand or Australia first due to time zone differences. By connecting your VPN to a server in that country, you can often trick the game store (like Steam or the Xbox Store) into thinking you are located there, allowing you to download and play the game hours before it officially unlocks in the South African region.
The Use Case: Protection from DDoS Attacks
For competitive gamers, especially those who stream their gameplay, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks can be a real problem. A malicious opponent can flood your home IP address with junk traffic, overwhelming your internet connection and kicking you out of the game.
When you game with a VPN, your real IP address is hidden. Opponents can only see the IP address of the VPN server, which is protected by industrial-strength anti-DDoS mitigation. Your personal connection remains safe and stable.
Clever Use #3: Secure Your Entire Smart Home (IoT Devices)
Take a look around your home. You probably have more internet-connected devices than you think. Your smart TV, your wireless printer, your home security cameras, your smart speakers (like Google Home or Alexa), and even your smart fridge—these are all part of the “Internet of Things” (IoT).
The problem? Many of these devices have notoriously poor security and are rarely updated, making them a prime target for hackers. A criminal could potentially hack your security camera to spy on you or hijack your smart devices to launch attacks on others.
The Challenge: You Can’t Install a VPN App on a TV
You can easily install the NordVPN app on your laptop and phone, but you can’t install it directly on most smart TVs or printers. So how do you protect them?
The Solution: Install the VPN on Your Wi-Fi Router
This is a more advanced technique, but it’s incredibly powerful. Many modern Wi-Fi routers support VPN client functionality. By configuring your router to connect to a NordVPN server, you create a blanket of protection over your entire home network.
Every single device that connects to your Wi-Fi—your laptop, your phone, your smart TV, your guests’ phones—will automatically have its traffic routed through the secure, encrypted VPN tunnel. This single setup protects all your vulnerable IoT devices from external threats, encrypts all your household’s Browse activity, and provides all the benefits of a VPN to every device in your home without needing to install the app on each one.
Clever Use #4: Find Unbiased, Global Information & Bypass Filters
The internet you see is not the same as the internet someone in another country sees. Search engines like Google heavily personalize and localize your results based on your past search history and your current location. News websites may show you different headlines or stories.
The “Filter Bubble” Problem
This creates a “filter bubble” where you are primarily shown content that reinforces your existing viewpoint or is deemed most relevant to your specific region. While often helpful, it can limit your perspective when you need truly unbiased, global information.
The VPN Solution
A VPN allows you to instantly step outside your filter bubble.
- For Researchers & Students: Are you writing a paper on a sensitive political topic? Connect to a server in a country known for strong journalistic freedom, like Switzerland or Sweden, to see a different, less biased set of search results and news articles.
- For Competitor Research: Are you a business owner wanting to see how your international competitors market themselves to their local audience? Connect to a server in their country and browse their website and social media as if you were a local customer.
- Bypassing Censorship: For people in countries with heavy internet censorship, a VPN is a vital tool for accessing blocked social media platforms, independent news, and a free and open internet.
Clever Use #5: Stay Securely Connected to South Africa When Abroad
This is an essential tip for any South African who travels or lives overseas.
The Problem: The Digital Expat’s Dilemma
When you’re abroad and you try to access certain South African online services, you often run into a brick wall.
- Online Banking: You try to log into your FNB, Absa, or Standard Bank online profile from London. Your login attempt is immediately flagged as suspicious due to the foreign IP address, and your account might be temporarily locked for security reasons.
- Local Streaming: You want to catch up on the latest season of a show on Showmax or watch a live rugby match on the DStv Now app, but you get a message saying, “This content is not available in your region.”
The VPN Solution: Your Digital Ticket Home
A VPN with servers in South Africa is the perfect solution.
- Open your NordVPN app from anywhere in the world.
- Connect to a high-speed server in Johannesburg or Cape Town.
- Your device is now assigned a South African IP address.
To all online services, it now looks as if you are Browse from right here at home. You can log into your banking profile securely without raising alarms, stream the Springboks game live, and stay connected to your digital life in South Africa, no matter where you are in the world.
Conclusion: The Ultimate Digital Multitool
It’s time to stop thinking of your VPN as just a simple privacy tool. It is a powerful, versatile utility that can have a tangible impact on almost every aspect of your digital life.
It is a money-saving tool that helps you fight back against unfair price discrimination. It is a performance-enhancer that can give you an edge in online gaming. It is a security blanket that can protect your entire smart home. It is a key to a world of unfiltered information and a digital lifeline that keeps you connected to home.
By learning to use these clever features, you are unlocking the true potential of your NordVPN subscription. You are transforming it from a simple shield into your indispensable Swiss Army knife for navigating the complexities of the modern digital world.
