What is VPN ?

What is A VPN?

VPN stands for virtual private network. But that doesn’t really help that much, does it? It still sounds fairly technical and exotic.

But fear not, by the end of this section, you’ll know exactly what it all means. Let’s delve into what a VPN actually does without getting too bogged down in technical jargon.

When you connect to the internet, you usually do it through your home network (WiFi) or mobile data (4G or 5G) on your phone. Both of these types of “connections” are owned and controlled by a business, either a carrier and/or phone network or an ISP, Internet Service Provider.

Your connection can be tracked and monitored by either your carrier or your ISP. This is why both can easily block certain sites, crack down on things like torrenting and P2P file-sharing, and even pass on customers’ information to the authorities if you’ve been doing something illegal. They’re able to do this because your IP address is like your internet ID card. It contains reams of information about you.

Similarly, when you connect to a site on the internet, your device, either your phone, computer, or tablet, connects to the server that particular site is hosted on. From here, the site’s admins can view certain aspects of your data – things like your location, type of device, and even your gender and age. Meta loves this kind of data; it’s what Facebook was built to harness (and then sell on to advertisers).

And if all that sounds a little creepy, well… that’s because it is. But that is, sadly, how the internet works. But if you want to take control of your data and who can see it, a VPN is the quickest and easiest way to do that.

When you run a VPN on your phone or your computer at home, your IP address is effectively scrambled which makes it impossible for your carrier or ISP to track what you’re doing.

A VPN also makes your exact location and its associated data impossible for website owners and ISPs to accurately track too. You might be in Croydon, England but, according to their data logs, your exact location could be in LA or New York, or Brisbane. 

This is the power of a VPN; it creates a proxy of your online identity by masking your true location, identity, and associated data.