Why Santa Claus needs a VPN and so do you

Father Christmas - an old man with white hair and a long white beard wearing a red fur-trimmed hat and coat and circular glasses - holds his glasses and opens his mouth in a shocked expression
(Image credit: Unsplash/Kraken Images)

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.

By using one of the best VPNs, not only can you increase your online privacy by masking your internet connection and hiding your IP address, location, and browsing history, you can also spoof your location to anywhere in the world and access geo-restricted content.

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!

The best VPN for you (and Santa!): NordVPN30-day money-back guarantee

The best VPN for you (and Santa!): NordVPN
Based on our rigorous testing, NordVPN is the #1 VPN on the market. This is all thanks to its incredible security and privacy combined with super fast speeds and excellent unblocking capabilities. Plus, you can get your hands on it from just $2.99 per month, and there's even a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can try it out risk-free.

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 one of the most private VPNs. 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, the fastest 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 one of the best streaming VPNs 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. For example, the top VPN on the market (based on our testing), NordVPN, offers a feature called Threat Protection Pro which includes a malware scanner and blocker among other hand cybersecurity tools.

By choosing a VPN with these features, Father Christmas can stop hackers from stealing Christmas – or his data!

How to choose a VPN

Now that I’ve laid out why Santa needs a VPN, it’s time to give him some recommendations.

When looking for the VPN that's right for him, Father Christmas needs to look at how and why he's using one. The same goes for you, too. If you're looking for the best VPN for Netflix, or maybe the best gaming VPN, you need to make sure that the VPN you're considering has the servers, speeds and unblocking power to take on the task.

Another thing for him to consider is price. For the privacy, speed and unblocking Santa needs from his VPN, even the best free VPN won't do. That's not to say that Santa needs to shell out for a VPN, though – the best cheap VPN, Surfshark, is available from just $1.99 per month and would suit his needs quite nicely.

Another thing to consider is ease of use. While many VPNs are relatively simple, if you're looking for a set-and-forget VPN then ExpressVPN is a good choice. It's apps are simple and streamlined, and it's powerful, secure and great for streaming.

Olivia Powell
Tech Software Commissioning Editor

Olivia joined Tom's Guide in October 2023 as part of the core Future Tech Software team, and is the Commissioning Editor for Tech Software. With a background in cybersecurity, Olivia stays up-to-date with all things cyber and creates content across TechRadar Pro, TechRadar and Tom’s Guide. She is particularly interested in threat intelligence, detection and response, data security, fraud prevention and the ever-evolving threat landscape.