What a VPN actually does (and what it doesn't)
Strip away the marketing — here is what an honest VPN can promise you, and what it cannot. Spoiler: it cannot make you anonymous, and it cannot beat a court order.
PrivacyA VPN is one of the most over-marketed pieces of consumer software in history. The category sells itself with hooded figures, glowing locks, and the implication that switching it on makes you a ghost. The truth is more interesting and less dramatic.
What a VPN actually does
A VPN is, mechanically, three things stacked together: an encrypted tunnel between your device and a server we run, a network of those servers in many countries, and a small piece of software that decides what traffic goes through which tunnel.
When you turn it on, your operating system stops sending packets to the open internet directly. Instead it wraps every packet in our encryption and ships it to one of our servers. Our server unwraps the packet and sends it on. Replies come back the same way.
Three things this gets you
- The websites you visit see our server's IP, not yours. Your physical location and ISP-assigned address are hidden from them.
- Your ISP, your office network, and the coffee shop Wi-Fi see encrypted gibberish destined for one of our servers. They cannot tell what sites you are visiting or read the contents.
- You can pretend to be in a different country for as long as you are connected — useful for streaming, reading region-blocked news, or accessing services from a hotel.
What it absolutely does not do
Anyone who promises a VPN makes you "anonymous" is selling. A VPN moves the trust point from your ISP to us, but the trust still has to live somewhere. Specifically:
- A VPN does not stop a website you log into from knowing it is you. If you sign in to Gmail through a VPN, Gmail still knows it is you.
- A VPN does not stop browser fingerprinting. Your screen size, fonts, GPU, and timezone identify your browser with surprising accuracy regardless of IP.
- A VPN does not magically hide tracking cookies. If you accept tracking cookies on Site A, those cookies follow you across other sites that integrate the same trackers.
- A VPN does not protect you from malware. Encryption is unrelated to malicious downloads.
When a VPN is the right tool
A VPN is the right tool when the threat you care about is network-level: an ISP that logs your DNS queries, a hotel network that injects ads, a country that blocks Wikipedia. It is the wrong tool when the threat is account-level (use 2FA + a password manager) or device-level (use a passcode + full-disk encryption).
How to think about which VPN to trust
Since the trust has to live somewhere, ask three questions of any VPN you consider:
- 1Have they been audited by a reputable third party? Audit reports should be public.
- 2Where do they run their servers, and does that jurisdiction have a history of compelling logs?
- 3What happens if you do not pay them for one month — do they delete your account, or can it sit dormant linked to your real identity for years?
PlanetProxy publishes its audit reports, runs servers from RAM (so there is nothing to log), and deletes inactive accounts after 90 days. We are not the right answer for everyone, but we are honest about what we are.
Frequently asked
Does a VPN make my internet faster?+
No, a VPN cannot make your connection faster than your line — it adds a small overhead. With WireGuard expect 2-4% loss on fiber. The exception is when your ISP throttles certain protocols (e.g. video streaming); a VPN can route around that.
Can my employer see I'm using a VPN?+
They can see encrypted traffic going to a known VPN endpoint. They usually cannot see the contents. If your work explicitly bans VPNs, that detection will trip their tools.
Is using a VPN legal?+
In nearly every country, yes. A few authoritarian states ban or restrict VPNs (China, Russia, Iran, UAE among them). Where they are legal, using one is no different from using HTTPS — it's an internet privacy primitive.
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