Explainer
Many people do not. A VPN solves a few specific problems well and does nothing for the rest, so the answer depends on which problem you have. This page goes through the common ones.
You need a VPN if you want to hide your activity from the network you are connected to, or hide your address from the sites you visit. If your concern is something else, such as tracking, malware or fraud, a VPN is the wrong tool.
It also comes at a cost beyond the subscription. A VPN hands the view of your traffic to a company, so it only makes sense if you would rather that company had it than your network.
| Your reason | Does a VPN answer it? | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| I do not want my internet provider to see which sites I visit | Yes | The VPN provider gets that view instead |
| I use networks I do not control | Yes, for the network | HTTPS already protects most of the contents |
| I do not want sites to see my address | Yes | Sites have other ways of recognising you |
| I want to appear to be in another country | Often | Services may block VPN addresses, and their terms may forbid it |
| My employer or school requires it | Yes, theirs | That is a different product, used to reach their network |
| I do not want ads to follow me | Barely | Tracking relies mainly on accounts, cookies and your browser |
| I want protection from viruses and fraud | No | Those happen on your device and on the page you trust |
| I want to be anonymous | No | The provider can see you, and so can anything you sign in to |
What a VPN does not protect you from goes through the last three rows in more detail.
This is where a VPN is hardest to justify. Your internet provider can see which sites you reach, and it may have to keep some of that. If you trust a particular VPN provider more than your internet provider, or the law where you live concerns you, that is a real reason. If you have no view either way, you may simply be moving the same information to a company you know less about.
Name the party you want to keep out. If it is your network, your internet provider or the sites you visit, a VPN can help. If it is an advertiser, a thief or a service you log in to, it will not.
If you do want one, the choice that matters most is who runs it. Of the 77 records in the register, read on 21 October 2026, most have published little that anyone else has checked, and the score reflects that. Paying for a poorly documented service can leave you worse off than not having a VPN.
The same test applies. A phone on your mobile network gains little unless you have a reason to hide your activity from your carrier. A phone that joins hotel and airport Wi-Fi has more to gain, though apps and accounts will still identify you.
Generally not. Banking already runs over HTTPS, so the network cannot read it. A VPN will not stop a false banking page or malware on your device, and some banks treat VPN addresses as suspicious.
Start with what identifies you most: your accounts, browser cookies and reused passwords. A password manager, two-factor login and a browser that blocks trackers will usually do more for you than a VPN, and a VPN can sit alongside them if you also have a reason for one.
Next
Every explainer ends by naming the pages that own what it only touched.
Public Wi-Fi is less dangerous than the advertising says, because HTTPS already seals most of what you send. A VPN still hides which sites you reach, and some real risks remain that it does nothing about.
A DNS leak happens when your VPN carries your traffic but the name lookups go around it, which shows your network the sites you visit. This page covers why that happens and how to check for it.
A kill switch stops your traffic when the VPN tunnel drops, so it cannot carry on unprotected without your noticing. Kill switches differ in what they cover, and the differences decide when one actually helps.
"Independently audited" can describe very different pieces of work. This page covers the kinds of audit, what each one can show, and the questions to ask before an audit changes your mind about a provider.
Both make a request from another address. A VPN normally carries all your device's traffic and encrypts it; a proxy usually handles one app and may encrypt nothing at all. Here is how to tell which one you have.
A VPN asks you to trust one company. Tor splits your connection across three relays so that no single one sees both who you are and where you are going. They solve different problems, and neither replaces the other.
What happens to a packet between your device and a website when a VPN is on: the handshake, the tunnel, the name lookup and the exit. Each step also explains one way a VPN can fail.
In most of the world, using a VPN is legal. A short list of countries restricts, licenses or blocks them, and what you do through one is a separate question everywhere. This page is a map of that, not legal advice.
Running a VPN costs money every month, so a free one is paid for by something. This page sets out what that usually is, what has gone wrong in practice, and how to tell a sample from a business model.
A VPN protects one stretch of the path: your device to its server. This page covers everything outside that stretch, from your browser and your accounts to malware, a dropped tunnel and the claims made in the advertising.
One encrypted hop between your device and the internet. This page is the starting point for the section: what the hop does, who it hides you from, who it hands the view to instead, and which of the promises made for it survive contact with the mechanism.
Not an explainer but the model itself, for a reader who got to the end of this page and wants to know how the judgement is made.
What the register knows about this market as a whole, and what it does not — every figure from the index, none from a survey.