What is VPN? Explain like I’m Five.
Instead of dropping the mail off at the post office to be sent off to someone and then to get a reply you use a P.O. Box and you ask your friend to put his name on it.
When you send info online you directly connect to servers/websites etc.
With a VPN your information is sent using someone else so it doesn’t look like you.
That’s about ELI5 as I can get.
A VPN stands for “Virtual Private Network” and is a mechanism to virtually (as opposed to physically) attach yourself to some other, presumably “private” network. Examples include your workplace, school, or other institution.
This is done by means of what’s called encapsulation. Your actual traffic is encrypted and wrapped in headers of packets between you and the destination of the VPN.
A design consideration of VPN’s is whether “all” network traffic (read: including internet traffic), or only the traffic destined for your workplace (read: just work traffic) actually gets sent over the VPN or not. This has some significant considerations meaning that if you’re VPN’d from home to your work, they could potentially see that you’re browsing Facebook or PornHub or such, or doing any other activities that you might not want your work to know about. Political involvement, whistle-blowing, illegal activity, etc.
Lastly, a VPN could be configured so that there’s no real “network” at the other end besides just an internet gateway and that it’s just used to mask your digital footprint from a) your ISP and b) the internet at large.
Source: Was network engineer for almost a decade.
A VPN is like an assistant for your computer.
When your computer needs to get something from the internet, it sends out its assistant to get it instead.
Famous people do the same kind of thing. They send their assistant out to get groceries so they don’t have to worry about people recognising them in the store.
Sometimes it’s nice to be recognised when you’re famous, but other times it’s not. If a famous people is maybe having a bad day or feeling a bit grumpy then they might not want to talk to lots of different people and have their picture taken. That’s OK. We all feel like that sometimes and just want to be left alone. This is what the word “privacy” means.
Most people in the store are nice, but sometimes people can be mean. Sometimes they don’t respect other people’s need for privacy. They might watch the famous person, take secret pictures of them, look at what groceries they’ve got in their basket. Sometimes they then share this information with other people. But it’s not nice to gossip about other people like that.
That’s why the famous person has an assistant. Nobody recognises the assistant in the store so they just ignore them.
And the assistant knows not to tell anyone who they’re buying groceries for. Just in case anyone is being nosy.
So the famous person gets to keep their privacy but, with the help of the assistant, they can still get anything they need from any store.
[NOTE: this is supposed to be an ELI5 of one reason why people use VPNs, not a comprehensive explanation of every aspect of VPNs]
Looking something up on the internet without sharing that it was you who looked it up, but rather some random person in India.
Does it mean that we actually use an alternative ip address
The majority of people do not VPN to hide illegal activity.
Dumbass trying to explain something you don’t understand. Ironic.
Does it mean that we actually use an alternative ip address
I don’t know what you mean by “actually”. As opposed to what? If you’re referring to a VPN through which all traffic, including internet, is tunneled, you’ll be subject too whatever egress policy the remote network uses, which will usually amount to NAT from their NAT pool.
But no magic happens locally. Your IP stays the same, but your egress address is masked.