What Is a VPN and What Can It Do?

ISPs (Internet service providers) have a much broader reach than any individual website when it comes to what behavior they can track and what types of information they technically and legally can collect. But few ISPs are transparent about how much information about their customers they store and for how long, instead relying on broad disclosures in their fine print. In theory, a VPN will prevent an ISP from monitoring or logging all the traffic to and from your home Internet connection, because your data is encrypted as it passes through your ISP—at best they’d see gibberish passing from your home to a VPN server.

However, if you do decide to connect through a VPN for most of your browsing, you’re handing that same power to the VPN service as the single centralized point through which all of your traffic will pass. If you use a reputable, trustworthy VPN that goes out of its way to avoid collecting data on you or your activities, it’s a good trade-off. But if your VPN is collecting data or doing a poor job securing its own network, it’s a pointless exchange.

Although the extent is unclear, it’s certain that your ISP will collect data on you.

At a minimum, your ISP keeps track of every IP address it assigned you, often for six to 18 months. ISPs mostly use these records to respond to specific law enforcement requests, often to catch truly awful criminals. But no protections are in place to guarantee that it’s the only way ISPs use these logs. In 2017, the US Department of Justice unsuccessfully demanded that a Web host hand over more than a million IP addresses, namely that of anyone who accessed a website that helped organize protests during the presidential inauguration. Compliance with that demand would have allowed the DOJ to in turn request identifying information from ISPs on anyone who visited the site—including journalists doing research, bored Twitter users clicking a link, or people against the protests who wanted a hate read. A good VPN would spare the innocent the trouble and the invasion of privacy in such a situation.

Note: Unless otherwise noted, most of the discussion here addresses ISPs and law enforcement in the United States; situations are different in other countries. For instance, the European Union has specific rules on collecting and protecting customer data.

Although the extent of the collection is unclear, you can be certain that your ISP will collect data on you, and that it will use that data to sell you things or to help advertising partners sell you things. (In 2017, Congress voted down proposed rules that would prevent ISPs from collecting or selling many types of information about customer activities.) For example, if your ISP is AT&T, it could collect data about your search for home security systems and aggressively promote its own offering to you. Or Comcast could use your online behavior to figure out how to get you to watch more Hulu, which Comcast co-owns, instead of competitors like Netflix. A VPN would prevent an ISP from easily collecting this type of data about you.

The other concern is is with huge trove of datum being collect and lock away is how often they tend to be unlock . data breaches is are at huge company are so common now that the headline are n’t even shock anymore . If a database of internet history , hold by an isp or sell to a marketing partner , were to be publicly release , there ’s a good chance even anonymize datum could be tie back to real people . If you were to use a VPN , those logs is show would show only a single , steady connection from your home to a VPN server , and nothing else .

Most VPN providers advertise some version of a “no-logging” policy, and many are quick to say that because privacy is their business, they adhere to that policy in every way technically feasible. But some companies that have proudly claimed a no-logging policy have seen that disproven in a courtroom. A bad actor like that could easily turn your VPN connection into a huge log of personal information, which is why we think it’s so important that a VPN be trustworthy.