this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2025
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How VPNs really work: Protocols, safety and myth - Sentient Rant (sentientrant.com)
submitted 1 day ago by sentientRant@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
29 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

VPNs are often sold as a “privacy silver bullet,” but that framing causes more confusion.

A VPN does not make you anonymous.

It does not stop cookies, logins, browser fingerprinting, or payment-based identification.

What a VPN actually does is much narrower and more technical:

  1. It encrypts your internet traffic in transit
  2. It prevents your ISP or local network from seeing which destinations you connect to
  3. It makes websites see the VPN server’s IP instead of your real one
  4. That’s privacy at the network level, not identity hiding.

I wrote a detailed blogpost. Check it out.

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[–] nao@sh.itjust.works 4 points 23 hours ago
  1. It encrypts your internet traffic in transit

It encrypts it in part of the transit, the part between the VPN server and the target is the same as it would have been without a VPN

  1. It prevents your ISP or local network from seeing which destinations you connect to

True but now your VPN provider can see everything your ISP would have. Depending on the jurisdiction of your ISP and VPN, that could make it better or worse