I am concerned about internet privacy and security. I’ve heard of VPN’s, but every time someone tries to explain it to me they like to speak in jargon and make me feel inferior. Can someone explain the whole thing like I’m 5?
A Virtual Private Network is a way of securely connecting a computer to a distant network, via a public network such as the internet. This may make more sense with an example: The most common use case an office worker “telecommuting” or working from home. They need to access all the computers at their work network just as if they were sitting at their desk, directly connected to their corporate network, however, they don’t want these computers accessible to just anyone.
So, the remote employee has their computer create a “VPN” between their house and their office. There is a connection over the internet between the employees computer and a VPN server at the office. This VPN server is connected to the internet, and also to the corporate intranet (internal network). This VPN connection is encrypted, so no one can intercept or modify the data between the employee’s home and their office. Via this connection, they can access any computer they normally can when they are actually sitting in the office.
This is how they are used in the corporate world, but they can also be used for other things, like protecting your privacy. In this case, you pay some company a fee for access to their VPN server. You then set up you computer to only communicate via this VPN connection. All your data traffic travels through this secure connection, which means your government and/or ISP cannot examine it. They could try intercepting it after it leaves the VPN, but since the VPN provider has many customers, they will have a hard time finding out which traffic is yours.
You can also choose more privacy-concious VPN providers. Such providers take extra precautions to keep your data private, such as having multiple endpoints, not keeping records, and not co-operating with 3rd-parties without a court-order. Some VPNs let you pay anonymously (using bitcoins) so they really cannot identify their subscribers.
If you have few computers in your house, you can create a network between them. This means the computers can talk to each-other via the network. This network in your house is your private network. Only the computers in your house that are connected to this network can talk to each other. You as owner of this network can choose who you want to give access or not.
Now a few decades ago back some folks thought it would be nice to have a public network, one that can be used to share information and that is accesible by everyone (even bad guys). This is the internet.
Usually computers on a private network can access the internet via a router and firewall. This is a computer or device that manages which connections from your private network to and from the internet are allowed and makes sure the correct data is send to the correct computers. Think of it as the front door to your house, it allows people to go from the outside into your house and the other way around but not just anyone, only people with a key or people you let in.
Now imagine you dig a tunnel to your best friend’s house. Now you can go to your friends house without going through the front door, you’re never ‘outside’ and never pass a front door. Neither yours or your friend’s. Your houses have virtually become one ‘inside’.
This is what a VPN does. It connects one or more computers so they virtually become part of the same private (inside) network. They do this by creating a tunnel through the internet. Just like the tunnel you dug goes outside your house and through the outside world so does the VPN tunnel go through the public internet. But just like the real tunnel other people cannot go inside it, the only entrances are in your and your friend’s house. In case of a VPN the tunnel is kept secure by encrypting the data. On both sides there is some software or hardware that acts as the entrance to the tunnel (vpn client or vpn concentrator).
Now, aside from things like connecting to the office network from home you can do other cool things with this. In the case of the tunnel to your friends house, say he gave you a key to his front door, now you can choose to always go to the outside world by going through the tunnel and exiting your friend’s front door and return through there. Anyone outside who can’t see the tunnel (since it’s underground and hidden) will think you live in your friends house instead of your own. In the same way your internet connection can be routed through a VPN to go to the internet through their router/firewall and internet connection so it would seem you are located there instead of where you are. Of course your friend knowns you don’t really live there, so does the other side in a VPN. That means if anyone can convince your friend to spill your secret you can still be found.
VPN stands for virtual private network. In a nutshell: Imagine you know there’s a computer out in the world somewhere that’s both connected to the internet and totally anonymous. Any information going to and from that computer is of no use to whomever might want to try and track you down. If you could use THAT computer to surf the internet, you would be safe from privacy invasions.
But you can’t be at that physical location, whereever it is.
Instead, you create a special connection to that safe computer. This connection is called a VPN. Imagine it’s like a private highway from your machine to the safe machine. Only you can use it. Any information you want to get from the internet is sent through the private highway first, to the safe machine. The safe machine then makes the request for you and then sends it back along the highway to your machine. If someone tries to track down who asked for the information, they’ll only be able to go as far as the safe machine.
Caveat: as far as being totally anonymous on the internet, a VPN is only as safe as the operator allows it to be. In other words, if the VPN operator tracks your connections to the safe machine, it could be possible to connect your requests to the VPN with requests to the internet. The safest VPNs will not keep logs of your connections and will not provide account information to anyone who asks for it. Not all VPNs are safe enough to ensure complete privacy.
it’s not just about privacy. it’s also commonly used for private gaming. say you want to play with friend but he lives very far away. you don’t want to play publicly and allow random people to join you. the game does not support private coop. so you set up a vpn and you both join and use the lan feature of the game.
Think of a VPN as a really long network cable that you can plug in across the internet. Not a physical cable, a virtual cable. Wherever you plug it in, that’s where your Internet comes from.
Mostly useless in most places, but here are some examples of when you want to use one:
- If you’re in China, you can “VPN” to someone in another country to get around the Great Firewall.
- I can get access to my whole network at the office from anywhere in the world using my VPN! I can even print to the printer in the hallway… When I’m at the beach! You know, for business purposes…
Note: since the Internet thinks you’re located at the place where you plugged your VPN into, you’ll get funny ads targeted at people in that area. So if you VPN into a place in Orlando while you’re in London, web pages’ ads will say stuff like, “looking for love in Orlando?” or “Local mom from Orlando loses 500 lbs. thanks to one ancient secret.”
I need an explanation for why I’m connected to my American university’s VPN but cannot watch Netflix abroad.
it provides a secure connection between your computer and another system (called a VPN concentrator) across a public network, typically the internet.
Once you connect to that other system you become part of the other systems private network, this gets you another IP address on the other system’s network, since your connection to the other system is completely secure and encrypted no one can see what you are doing.
Modern VPN providers have systems all over the world so if you want to browse the internet from Germany or Brazil or the USA or the UK you can connect to different VPN concentrators, your provider will give you addresses for these different systems. All this enables you to do stuff on the internet with anonymity from your local internet provider or government, it also allows you to access websites that are not accessible in your location.
I personally use BT Guard for bittorrent. Ok, this is my first time on ELI5, so let’s see if I can nail it.
A VPN is a Virtual Private Network, meaning it is private, yet not a direct connection between two parties. The virtual portion of the acronym means that it’s a simulated.
The reason I use this technology is because while living in LA using Time Warner, I went to use the internet and was greeted with the same page, no matter what link I went to. It stated that a user at my internet address was using a peer-to-peer sharing site (downloading from piratebay) and if we did not cease and desist, our internet would be shut off. Me and my girlfriend still don’t know which one of us it was, as we both download TV shows and the occasional movie.
I tried using TOR (I’m a TOR user as well, which is in certain scenarios, more private. Reply if you want more information about that.), but it was a pain to route all internet traffic through that. So I looked into virtual private networks, and they are higher bandwidth, but as such, you usually need to pay for the service. Paying for the service anonymously is a bit difficult (prepaid visa cards…), so I went direct with my debit card, using what I found to be the most reputable service.
Recently Sweden (I think) signed into effect a net-neutrality law that forbade internet service providers from recording most exchanges of information on the internet, and infringed much less with monitoring. It seems as though this will bode well towards their countries internet industry, as many VPNs exit there. (I’ll explain.)
VPNs connect you to a private network between you and the exit point. So if I’m using BT Guard (which is my preferred paid VPN), when I log into my XwhateverX account, it will appear as though I’m logging in from Sweden. All traffic in between my computer and Sweden is secure. They are the “out” that my traffic exits the private network, requests the page or information I’m looking for, and returns to the VPN, and securely tunnels back to my actual computer.
Did I do ELI5 justice?
What you describe is NOT a VPN. It’s a proxy service that uses a VPN. (You’re describing the anonymous proxy instead of describing a VPN)
Obvious follow up question. Which VPN services don’t track the user’s connections?
Boo. This is a proxy, not a VPN.
I might bork this up, but here goes:
At your work, do you “sensitive” things. Things that you don’t want anyone else to see. You do your work at your computer from 9-5 pretty much every day then go home and chill.
But oh no! Something important came up and you need to get something done like … right now. None of your work stuff is home and you can’t gain access to it normally though the internet. Wat do?
That’s what VPNs are for. At your home computer, you establish a direct connection to your work computer via the internet. Normally the internet is a big damn web and your requests and uploads can go through a ton of different machines that you don’t really have any control over. This might make your data unsecure, someone might track it … there’s lots of variables which you don’t have control over which is what you don’t want when working with sensitive data.
A VPN is like what the guy above said. Instead of using the internet like a “web”, a VPN paves a personal use highway directly from your home computer to your work computer so that you can work on your stuff from home while having the security of working at work.
Please note: If your work computer has access to the normal internet, you can use your browser at home and all traffic will be routed from your home computer, to your work computer, and then into the internet at large. If you forget to disconnect your VPN and then start browsing porn youtube videos, your work will find out about it and take action accordingly, assuming they care about that kind of stuff.
“A virtual private network (VPN) is a private computer network that interconnects remote (and often geographically separate) networks through primarily public communication infrastructures such as the Internet.”
His question was clearly related to anonymity on the internet. I described a VPN and how it’s used in the context he asked about. Describing a VPN and something that uses a VPN is still describing a VPN. Stop being pedantic.
You were right about describing how it works in that context. I also described how it works below in an other context, like if you need to use a VPN for normal work and such.