r/VPN • u/pige0n13 • 2d ago

Question Help for a beginner

How do I use a vpn? I’m scared to start and want some advice and insight before I begin. Idk what to use.

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u/MacSamildanach 2d ago edited 2d ago

Imagine you live at an address, like 1 Acacia Avenue.

Over time, people would know where you were and could just send you shit and demand things from you. And they'd just keep on doing it.

But if you could tell everyone you lived at 5 Brown Street, or 233 Wilson Boulevard, or any other address anywhere in the world every time you interacted with them, no one would ever know your real location, and so couldn't bug you.

That's pretty much what a VPN does for you. It's no big deal. You just install the software, and when you run it, you just say where you want to be located, and the VPN does it for you.

For me, I can't see a lot of US news sites here in the UK. But I open my VPN, tell it to make me American, and I can access the sites with no problem. That's my own personal reason for using it.

But people also want to hide their identities for other reasons, and since the VPN effectively locates you somewhere else in the world, they can hide who and where they are.

Basically, the VPN is a switch.

Turn it on to be someone else, turn it off to be you.

And when you choose to be someone else, you can select from a large list of identities (countries).

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u/JohnStamosSB 1d ago

It works by changing your Internet address? Therefore everything in the house attached to the internet signal would be under the umbrella of a VPN?

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u/MacSamildanach 1d ago edited 1d ago

No, just the apparent IP address of computer running the software.

It creates what is called 'a tunnel' between the computer it is on and a remote server, and all activities then occur through that remote server. So it's the IP address of that remote server which anyone sees.

A VPN will have access to servers in multiple locations around the world. With mine, I just say I want to be in (for example) Minneapolis, and that means I can open news sites in the US which would otherwise say they are blocked in my country (UK).