VPN

[Fist and Faith]

Can you folks in the know tell me what VPN is all about? I've seen a couple posts about cell phones. But it's also got to do with privacy while on the internet?

[Savor Dam]

I may not say this right and the more technical folks (like Way) may revise and extend this explanation, but...

VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a essentially setting up an encoded tunnel through the internet so that your PC, phone, or other device can talk to another system or network with almost no chance of the data exchange being evesdropped...at least not casually. While the NSA can crack it before pouring their morning coffee, for the most part it is considered secure. Even my current employer, which is very protective of its intellectual property, trusts VPN.

While there are lots of ways to use this, a common one used for businesspeople to be able to work from home or access their corporate email from their smartphone. On a broader scale, it is also used to tie together geographically distributed data centers into a seamless secure cloud.

[Avatar]

Pretty much spot on. Think of it as a sort of proxy. You communicate with the VPN host, they communicate with whatever site (or whatever) that you want, and they send the data back to you. From the outside, you are only communicating with them, and nobody can "see" your data or endpoint or whatever. From the inside no difference (except perhaps a minor slowdown).

--A

[wayfriend]

I use a VPN when I want to connect my laptop to the corporate network where I work. This way, even though I am using public internet, corporate information remains secure.

Yes, you can think of it as a tunnel. Or a network -within- a network. It's a virtual private network carried through secure tunnels in a physical public network.

[Fist and Faith]

It looks to me like the VPN company becomes the only ones who have access your info. If you're concerned or just wanting privacy, then you still don't get it, because of them. And if someone offered them enough money, they might have all kinds of amazing info to sell.

[wayfriend]

That's not going to happen the way crypto works. You have a private key which secures your data. The VPN vendor is theoretically as unable to read your data as anyone else. Of course, a bad acting VPN provider may add back doors and hooks, but people notice that kind of thing very fast.

[Fist and Faith]

Interesting. Thanks all. Not that I have any sensitive info.