this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2025
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182
How VPNs really work: Protocols, safety and myth - Sentient Rant (sentientrant.com)
submitted 1 day ago by sentientRant@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
31 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

VPNs are often sold as a “privacy silver bullet,” but that framing causes more confusion.

A VPN does not make you anonymous.

It does not stop cookies, logins, browser fingerprinting, or payment-based identification.

What a VPN actually does is much narrower and more technical:

  1. It encrypts your internet traffic in transit
  2. It prevents your ISP or local network from seeing which destinations you connect to
  3. It makes websites see the VPN server’s IP instead of your real one
  4. That’s privacy at the network level, not identity hiding.

I wrote a detailed blogpost. Check it out.

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[–] SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 day ago

As far as I understand, a certain level of data hygiene will do wonders for even a basic setup.

For example, on our server, we have a container that maintains a kill-switched connection to a subscription VPN. Several other containers, including one with a browser, can only route their traffic through that container, and we don't use any of them for anything personal or outside their intended purpose. We basically act as if there are completely different people on that connection, like we have a secret second family. Remote activity is done through a self-hosted VPN to the home network, then VNC to the containers.

If we want to use the subscription VPN on other devices, we connect to a different location and possibly use Tor browser for extra anonymity. No activity or information overlap, ever.