How does VPN works

How does VPN works
To be clear, we’re going to be talking about public VPN services – the kind that you can buy and install on your PC, phone or tablet – rather than a VPN your business might operate to tunnel into the company’s servers, although many ofthe principles will be the same. Typically, when you connect to the internet without
a VPN, all your traffic passes through your broadband provider’s servers, allowing it to log and potentially see everything you do online. Remember that under the UK’s Investigatory Powers Bill, ISPs and phone companies are now obliged to store records ofwebsites visited by every customer for a year, which can be accessed by the police or security services on production ofa warrant. Companies such as BT even handed over customers’ data to police without a warrant. The VPN effectively makes the
data collected by your ISP useless. It redirects your internet traffic to a remote server – potentially outside ofthe country or even the continent you’re in. Your device will be assigned an IP address on the remote server, so when you make a request to a service such as Netflix or BBC iPlayer, it looks like you’re in the country the server is hosted from, not the location ofyour computer. All the data sent and received is encrypted, using a variety ofprotocols. All your ISP (or anyone inspecting the data) can see is that you accessed the VPN, not the sites you visited. Eavesdropping is futile. At least, that’s the theory.

WHAT THE VPN PROVIDER Do

In some ways, you’re just transferring the problem from one organisation to another. Instead ofrouting traffic through your ISP’s servers, you’re routing it through the VPN company’s – and those servers might be in the US, Russia, Panama or practically anywhere. Most ofthe VPNs we’ve reviewed in this feature have dozens or hundreds of server dotted around the globe. What makes them any more secure or inscrutable than, say, BT’s or Virgin’s? “You’re right to assume that it’s next to impossible to
test whether your VPN is being shady or not, or to confirm that they are not recording your activity,” said independent security expert Graham Cluley. Many ofthe VPN providers will, therefore, publicly
declare whether they do or don’t retain logs on their users. Our choice ofbest overall VPN, NordVPN, states on its website that “we do not keep logs. Ifsomeone asks us about you, we have nothing to share.”