Mike4 wrote:It's an acronym for "virtual private network" but I've no idea why it called that.
Well, it's 'cos it provides a network that isn't a physical network (i.e. is virtual) and is private (secure, encrypted).
OK, look, the name is best understood by knowing its original, and still today major, use, being by the corporate world to allow employees at home or in any random hotel, internet cafe, etc, etc, to connect to and be part of the company's in-house network just as if they were in the building at work. It is, in effect, (almost) the same as if the company had run a very long wire (or fibre) from work to their home/hotel/cafe exclusively for the employee to plug into and be directly part of the company's in-house network.
So, it's a private network, a "wire" so to speak, to within the company and, as it runs on top of the internet, there is no physical wire that's been run out and so it's a virtual network. Virtual private network.
Now, for non-corporate uses the VPN "wire" goes from your device to a VPN server
somewhere on the internet and your access to the internet goes out from there -- and remember, the data on the VPN "wire" is encrypted. This gives three main benefits:
a) Privacy: your IP and location are hidden from the websites etc you access. What they see is the VPN server's IP and location, not yours.
b) The ability to side-step any geo-restrictions by websites etc you access, as those sites see the VPN server's location, not yours.
c) Security: as everything on the VPN "wire" is encrypted all that anyone spying on the connection can make out is that you connected to the VPN server, and not which websites etc you connected to through it nor any of the data you sent and received. (This is particularly useful when using potentially dodgy internet cafe WiFis and the like.)
Personally I don't use a VPN normally, just when I want to side-step geo-restrictions and in the blue moon cases of my laptop away from home and using potentially dodgy WiFis.
For some people in some countries the (a) to (c) benefits also allow them to avoid their governments spying on what they are doing and/or restricting what sites they can access (like western news sources). And guess what, using VPNs is illegal in Belarus, Iraq & North Korea and highly restricted in China, Russia, Turkey and several Arab countries....