VPN stands for Vitual Private Network.
Firstly, we have to understand what is network ?
At home, our internet connection has modem, router, etc. Also, we have devices like smartphone, laptop, TeleVision. We use to transfer data from our Smartphone to Television or computer using Wifi which creates a network but that is internal network which has no link to the outside world.
But, say you are connected to any site. e.g. You are reading this article on my blog via internet, so this article is saved on some server which has datacenter in any part of the world be it China, US, India or any other location. You requested to view this page to server and server sends a response to you so that you can see a page.
All this work is managed by IP (Internet Protocol) address. Devices like routers, modems, hubs & all websites has assigned some IP address. When you request a server, your IP address goes to the server and server response to your request. This is a way internet works. It has many advantages as well as disadvantages.
Primary advantage of this is you can access internet via this way or we can say that internet is all about IP address.
On contrary, there are many disadvantages of this procedure:
1. Your request to server goes via your ISP (Internet service provider), so ISP may track which website you visit as they know your IP address and IP address of websites are publicly available. So, they can easily sniff on you.
2. You goes to some hotel or cafeteria and found an open Wifi there and you start using that. Many times data on open Wifi is not encrypted and any hacker or technical guy sitting there can capture your data. In this case, you are not even aware of your data being lost and may be misused by other.
3. Data on some sites are restricted for specific country or region. e.g. Some videos are restricted in India, when you visit that page you see a message showing ‘This video is not available for your country’. As they know from which IP, request is originating, they block the specific blocks of IP addresses.
4. Your school or office has restricted to use some social media or any other sites which you are not available to access.
To overcome all these problems, VPN comes into play.
It is a way of adding an extra layer of privacy to your online activity.
In general, when you access any website your connection go from you to your ISP to web server.
While using VPN, firstly your request is made from you to VPN server and then VPN server to web server. So, your ISP & web server see it as request emerging from IP address of VPN server.
Benefits of using VPN:
1. Connection between you and your VPN server is encrypted via VPN tunnel, so your ISP never come to know from where the request is originated. You can then browse the web anonymously and without worrying about the data theft.
2. As your real IP address is hidden, nobody will be able to trace you back.
3. You can access any website (even restricted) from your office or school as request is now originating from VPN server whose IP address is not blacklisted.
4. Using public Wifi is not a concern of privacy with VPN as even some hacker sniff the packets transferred, he is not able to understand due to encryption.
VPN also allow employees of organization to securely access a corporate intranet while located outside the office.
e.g. If you are travelling to China and tried to access Facebook. You cannot access it directly as China has blocked Facebook in their country. But with use of VPN, you will not face any problem. Hope you are clear about the concept of VPN now.
It seems like a magic band to overcome these problems but it has some of it’s problems like:
a) Internet speed gets slow down as data is transferred via VPN which adds an extra layer. Also, data on VPN is encrypted, so encryption & decryption of data consumes processing power from server which further slows down your internet speed.
b) Your ISP doesn’t know about you when you use VPN service, but VPN provider can then knows all stuff about you. It is just like shifting a layer of trust from ISP to VPN provider.
Using a VPN:
Using VPN is very easy. You just have to install the app and it itself do all of the configuration.
There are number of VPN services available on web, play store, app store but many factors influence deciding which VPN service to use.
a) Price: There are free services, freemium and also paid ones. Each one comes with different features set in itself. You have to decide the price you can pay.
b) Speed: As discussed above, speed decreases with use of VPN but there are many good VPN providers there which has multiple datacenteres so that your internet speed will not got affected much.
c) Security: It is one of the major factor in deciding which VPN to use. Most of the time, you are using VPN so that your data will remain secure but if your VPN servers are buggy, your security may got compromised.
d) Support: This is a major fator especially if you paid for the service and got stuck on some issue. Is your query got resolved on time ?
e) Number of connections: If you want to connect your computer, smartphone, tablet or any other device simultaneously, you have to see how many connections your provider allows you at a given time.
It still looks wonder to use VPN as nobody knows what you are doing or at best who you are. You are completely anonymous on the web. Right ?
I want you to read a little bit more if you are thinking this.
Most of the websites not only tracks your IP address, but also other things like cookies, browser info, OS info and other details. And if government is after you, they can still get you by reading your logs present on VPN server. Although this is not a normal practice, but it is possible.