What is a VPN? Here’s everything you need to know, including how to choose the right one for you
An online privacy expert reveals all about virtual private networks
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Your support makes all the difference.Virtual private networks, better known as VPNs, aren’t new technology. The first VPN protocol – a set of rules that determines how programs ‘talk’ to each other – was developed in the late 1990s.
Once a niche product for the privacy-conscious, VPNs are hard to ignore these days. They’re now everywhere, as many of us are spending more time working from home, and VPN companies have taken their marketing to streaming and TV.
What is a VPN, though? And why would you need one? How do you determine which of the many services out there is the right fit for you? Scroll on, as we answer all these questions and more.
What is a VPN?
To understand how VPNs work, it’s important to first go over how we normally access the internet. To get on the internet, you first need to access some kind of local network – usually your wifi connection at home or work. This network gives you its IP address, which is a set of numbers that acts as your virtual address while on the web. To surf the web, you have to have an IP address – it’s just how the web works.
However, an IP address tells the sites you visit a lot about you – your physical location, for one – and often acts as an anchor for the data collected on you. One way around this is to use a VPN, which connects you to a ‘fake’ virtual network (hence the name), which lets you connect to the wider internet with the IP address of the VPN, rather than your own.
When you activate a VPN, you connect from your wifi’s network (or that of your phone provider) to a server run by the VPN company, which hosts the virtual network, and then connects you to the site you want to visit. Besides giving you the new IP address, the VPN also encrypts your connection, so it’s harder to trace back to you.
With the VPN switched on, not only can the sites you visit not see your IP, and thus who you are, your internet service provider (ISP) won’t be able to see the sites you visit. This makes your browsing a whole lot more private, which adds some peace of mind. The only parties that now know which sites you’ve visited are you and, theoretically, at least, the VPN – but more on that later.
However, privacy isn’t the only reason to use a VPN. The other is that most VPN services let you connect to different servers across the world, enabling you to get IPs from different locations. This lets you pretend to be somewhere you aren’t – which is called ‘spoofing’ – and is fantastic when you’re on holiday and want to access services such as online banking, which sometimes is region locked.
What a VPN isn’t
VPNs are pretty handy little tools and are great for whenever you need to spoof your location, mask your IP address, or add privacy to your browsing. However, that’s more or less where their usefulness ends. While some VPN providers will tack on some extras, such as ad blocking, many of the promises VPN services make should be taken with a grain of salt.
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While VPNs can make browsing a lot more private, there’s no guarantee, as IP addresses are only one of the many ways you can be tracked online. You can also wonder whether instead of sites or your ISP tracking you, it may, in fact, be the VPN doing so instead. After all, the company could, if it wanted to, log which sites you visit and sell that information.
While we like to believe VPN companies when they say they don’t log our activity, in the end, we are taking their word for it. There’s no good way to be absolutely sure they’re not keeping records of your browsing.
Another issue is that while VPNs are an upgrade to your online security, they’re no panacea. Many VPN providers’ marketing materials will claim their services will protect you from hackers and data theft, which isn’t strictly true. The built-in security of your HTTPS connection (that little lock symbol in your browser’s address bar) is doing the heavy lifting there, so, a VPN isn’t really necessary.
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It’s important to keep in mind that a VPN is, first and foremost, a rerouting tool with some capacity for greater privacy built in. As impressive as this is, that’s all it is.
How to choose a VPN
Now you know what a VPN is and isn’t, let’s move on to picking the right one for you. There are a few things to keep in mind – the most important being price, performance and privacy. Secondary concerns should be extra features such as ad blocking or making sure the service lets you access the locations you need.
When it comes to price, you’ll quickly find there are no good rules. For example, when reviewing ExpressVPN, we were a little taken aback by the price tag of £80.75 per year, though, at the same time, you get a lot of VPN for that money. That said, most VPNs are cheaper, with another industry mainstay, NordVPN, costing about half that (£45.48 per year).
In both cases, and with most other VPNs, though, you can get some pretty good multi-year deals. ExpressVPN costs £112 if you sign up for two years, and, in our NordVPN review we break down its many different deals, some of which may end up costing you only £30 or so per year. Other VPNs have similar offers.
Price isn’t everything, however – you should keep an eye out for any performance issues, too. A VPN will always negatively affect your connection speed, as the rerouting of your connection means the signal has farther to travel. A good VPN, such as ExpressVPN, will only see you lose a few percentage points, while more mediocre services could see your connection speed drop by as much as half.
Finally, while there’s no way to guarantee safety and privacy, you may want to have a look around the web before committing to a VPN and make sure there are no skeletons lurking in the closet. A simple Google search should turn up anything particularly egregious. Our process for putting together our selection of the best VPNs involved making sure all the right boxes are ticked, including making sure VPNs undergo regular audits by third parties.
Why you can trust us
Fergus O'Sullivan is an expert when it comes to how we can safeguard our privacy online. As a technical writer, he has written in-depth and extensively on the topic, with this work spanning reviews and explainers on subjects ranging from VPNs and encryption to passkeys and password managers.
Looking for more recommendations? Read our tech expert’s review of the best cheap VPNs that actually work