Educating People on the Web

VPNs and proxies are a great help to avoid restrictions related to specific web services. Their most well-known feature is the one that allows you to change your IP address and access censored sites or SaaS at the same time. Nevertheless, you can imagine that there are several differences between the two types of solutions.

What is a VPN?

To remind you of the essentials. A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is used mainly in companies. It allows computers to be connected in the same network securely. For example, they can access internal programs and shared files.
However, if an employee of the company is located outside and therefore outside the local network, for example, how does he access the same information as to his colleagues? It’s simple; we create a secure (encrypted) tunnel that allows him to connect to the company’s server via the Internet. A firewall is responsible for ensuring that it has all the necessary permissions to access the network.
That is the most important thing. But how did NPVs come to be widely used for reasons that do not necessarily correspond to their primary purpose? Many use them to remove censorship or restrictions. An example is allowing yourself to access the Netflix catalog from another country.

It is possible because VPNs allow you to surf the web with a foreign IP address or to surf anonymously. Also, there is the security aspect, which is also very important. More about VPNs on this website

What is a Proxy?

Once the VPN principle is well understood, there is no need to talk too much about how a Proxy works. It is precisely the same principle. The remote proxy server is your intermediary for data transmission over the web. Here too, it is not your IP address that is used, but that of the relay server.

VPN and Proxy: the differences

The main difference is in the security and privacy of your browsing. Indeed, proxies have the defect that they do not encrypt between your device and the proxy server. It is the opposite of a VPN that offers not only encryption but other security shields that make it extremely difficult to intercept your data.

Another difference between a proxy and a VPN is the scale of their operation. Proxies are indeed quite limited and are most often used for data transit via web surfing (HTTP protocol). HTTP proxies are directly configured on browsers. All you need is a public IP address and the corresponding port. It is even more straightforward, thanks to extensions that take care of everything and require only the push of a button.
As for VPNs, they are not limited to a few protocols but manage all the traffic passing through your terminal and offer additional security layers.

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