What is a VPN and How it Works in a Nutshell

Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a tool that has been around since at least the late 90s. Companies, universities and other organizations, that have a need for security and privacy, used them extensively. In recent years, however, the existence of these types of services have come to the attention of your average consumer.

The revelations of mass data gathering by marketing companies, governments, and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have led to an increasing amount of people concerned about their privacy. The nothing to hide argument is no longer valid as people realize that private data should remain private and not be manipulated, sold or exchanged by third parties most have never heard of.

There is also the issue of security as data theft has become increasingly common. Public networks are stupidly unsafe and when you connect to wifi in airports, hotels or cafes, you open up your data like banking details, private emails, health records etc. to potential hackers who can do with it what they wish.

A VPN encrypts all your data as it travels to the VPN provider’s server so even if your ISP or random hacker know something is being transferred, what it is or where it originates will be indecipherable to them. You can then enjoy a higher degree of security and anonymity.

But a VPN is not only a reaction to the slight doom and gloom of the modern internet. You can connect to a VPN server in another country, for example, and enjoy local online entertainment that is usually restricted geographically.

A VPN will also allow you to shop more intelligently by hiding your IP address as prices for many goods and services are determined by location.  Every device that connects to the internet is assigned an IP address, among other things, this allows websites to hone in on your devices’ location. Using a VPN replaces your IP address with one of its own server in any country you wish, that the provider has servers in. From that point on any website, you visit will see you as located in that country. 

This short article is really just the bare bones of how VPNs work and the benefits they provide. We hope to soon bring you a much more detailed and more technical analysis of what a VPN is and how it functions.

For the time being, however, we’d like to share an infographic we made summarising the above, robots and everything. We think it’s pretty awesome, hope you enjoy it and find it helpful.


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Have been pretty happy with @BufferedVPN so far.

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