What is a VPN? Why You Need a VPN, and How to Choose the Right One

What Is a VPN?

VPN stands for virtual private network. When we talk about VPNs, we're usually talking about a commercial VPN being sold directly to consumers for use in day-to-day life, but the idea of VPNs has much broader applications than that. Corporations have long used VPN technology to let workers access digital resources no matter where they are, long before COVID-19 made work from home the norm.

When you switch on a VPN, it creates an encrypted connection (sometimes called a "tunnel") between your device and a remote server operated by the VPN service. All your internet traffic is routed through this tunnel to the server, which then sends the traffic off to the public internet as usual. Data coming back to your device makes the same trip: from the internet, to the VPN server, through the encrypted connection, and back to your machine.