Eli5: How do VPNS work and why are they considered safe? Couldnt the network Im connecting to not just read out all my passwords etc.?
In: Technology
First of all, it’s worth mentioning that there are two primary uses for the VPN.
The first (and original) use is to connect to the remote network over an untrusted line (usually the Internet) so that nobody can peek into the transferred data. It can be used to connect remote company locations back to the head office servers or to allow staff to work remotely. In this case, both VPN endpoints trust each other so they only need to protect communication from the middlemen. VPN is designed to do so very well.
The second use that has been growing in popularity in recent years is the internet VPN services. They leverage the technology to protect you from being eavesdropped on by your local ISP and/or hide your location from the servers you are connecting to. It won’t protect you from the VPN service itself, but the modern web is largely using HTTPS to encrypt communication anyway, so the combination is safer than the sum of parts – VPN will not allow your local ISP to know what sites you visit, and HTTPS will not let the VPN service to read your passwords.
There are other solutions out there if you desire greater anonymity, the most widely known being TOR (The Onion Router) which uses sophisticated algorithms to bounce your packets around the globe before reaching the final destination so that no single link in the chain knows both the sender and the recipient of the connection. The downside is that the connection delays are unpredictable and bandwidth is generally quite limited, so it’s only suited to general web browsing, but not gaming or streaming.
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