Do you actually need a VPN?
For some things, genuinely yes. For a lot of what VPNs are sold for, no. Here is how to tell which you are.
What a VPN actually does
A VPN encrypts everything leaving your device and sends it to a server run by the VPN provider, which passes it on. Two things change as a result, and both are worth stating precisely because most of the confusion comes from overstating them.
Whoever runs the network you are on stops being able to see where you are going. A café, a hotel, an airport, your employer, your broadband provider — they can see you are connected to a VPN and how much data you are moving, and that is all.
The sites you visit see the VPN server’s address rather than yours. That hides your rough location and makes IP-based tracking less useful. It does not make you anonymous, because most tracking has not depended on IP addresses for years.
The trade is that your VPN provider can now see what your network could see before. You are choosing who to trust, not removing the need to trust anyone. That is a real improvement on an unfamiliar network and a smaller one at home.
When it is genuinely worth it
- Networks you do not control. Public Wi-Fi, a shared house, a hotel — the clearest case, and the one where the benefit is easy to state. More on that here.
- Keeping your broadband provider out of your browsing history. They can see the domains you visit even over HTTPS. Whether that matters to you is a preference, not a security question — what they can see.
- Covering a household of devices at once. If the reason is several people and several devices, that changes which product suits. More on that here.
What it will not do
This is the part usually left out. A VPN protects the connection; most of what goes wrong online does not happen at the connection.
- It will not stop you entering your password into a convincing fake page.
- It will not stop a download containing something it should not.
- It will not protect an account whose password has been reused and leaked.
- It will not make you anonymous — you are still signed in to things.
None of that makes a VPN pointless. It makes it one control among several, and the others — a password manager, two-factor authentication, keeping software current — are free.
Work it out for your own connection
Three tools, all free, none of which needs an account:
- VPN speed test— measure what yours actually costs you, rather than reading someone else’s benchmark.
- Public Wi-Fi check — work out how exposed you actually are on the network you are on now.
- VPN troubleshooter — for when you have one and it is misbehaving.