# What good does a VPN do?



## quynn75 (Jun 20, 2015)

I've been hearing this word come up over and over again. Can someone explain it to me?

From what I got from the talks, it seems like it protects your computer from eavesdroppers (read NSA).

Hidemyass seems to be the best provider, according to Best VPN Service Reviews News Bestvpnservicemag.com . Has anyone have any direct experience with them?

Thanks.


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## Orange Lightning (Jun 20, 2015)

quynn75 said:


> I've been hearing this word come up over and over again. Can someone explain it to me?
> 
> From what I got from the talks, it seems like it protects your computer from eavesdroppers (read NSA).
> 
> ...



A VPN stands for Virtual Private Connection. Imagine for a minute that the internet is a mountain of stone. Anyone can go anywhere on that mountain that they want, including you. A VPN tunnels through that mountain, and gives you your own little personal area that only you and your associates can walk through. Complete with locked doors on each end of the tunnel. Or, in technical terms, a private connection *through* a public network. In other words, your connection travels through the internet, but isn't available to anyone on it but you and the VPN provider. In this way, your internet traffic is hidden and protected.

So lets say you want to access your work's network over the internet from home. If your work's network is on the internet with an established VPN, you can go through the internet to connect to just your work's network. 
I don't use them really. I don't have a practical use for one besides security and privacy. And my privacy and security are already pretty good. In usage though, depending on the provider, they can really slow you down and throw off what country your browser thinks you're in. The trade off being security and utility.


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## micjustin33 (Jun 24, 2015)

VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. Here's how it works. You, sitting at home, connect to the Internet as normal and then start the VPN software. This sets sets up (usually) a secured and encrypted connection to another computer/server somewhere in the world. When you go to a website while connected to the VPN the requests are passed on to that other server and then the information is sent to your computer.
Moreover you can read the the Benefits of VPN and How it Saved my Day. hope it will help you to understand more about VPN and you can choose the best one for yourself.


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## greytowhite (Jul 18, 2015)

When I learned this stuff in school VPNs were used mainly for employees to connect to a work network from home. Now it's used for all kinds of purposes including hiding one's traffic from an ISP usually for torrenting without detection in the US, getting over the Great Firewall of China, using services not available in one's country due to digital rights enforcement, and hiding one's Internet usage from a significant other.


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