Index

Start with the question

Every guide we have, listed as the thing you would actually type into a search box. Filter by topic or search the whole set. Several of these end with “a VPN will not help you here” — that is on purpose.

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Search all guides Free tools included Honest about limits

Interactive

Follow your traffic, hop by hop

Every request you make passes through the same six places. Click any one to see exactly what it can observe about you — then flip the switch and watch what changes. Two of these stops do not change at all, and that is the part most VPN marketing leaves out.

Your responsibility

Everything starts here

Your browser, your apps and your operating system see all of it in the clear. This is the one hop a VPN cannot help with, because it is inside the encryption, not outside it.

Full browsing history, saved locally by the browser
Every account you are signed in to — and everything they attach to it
Your browser fingerprint: fonts, screen, timezone, extensions
Anyone with the device has all of this, VPN or not

Unchanged

A VPN changes nothing here

This is worth being blunt about. Turning on a VPN does not sign you out of Google, does not clear your history, and does not alter your fingerprint by one bit. If a guide tells you otherwise, close it.

Browsing history: still saved locally
Signed-in accounts: still identify you by account, not IP
Fingerprint: identical before and after
Fixing this hop is a browser and habit problem, not a network one

High exposure

The café, the office, the hotel

Whoever runs the network you joined sees the name of every site you visit, because your device asks their DNS resolver to look each one up in plain text.

Every domain you request, by name, with a timestamp
Destination IP addresses and how much data went where
On a managed network: often the full URL, via their own certificate
Page contents stay encrypted by HTTPS

Protected

One encrypted line, one address

The network now sees a single encrypted connection to a single IP address. It cannot tell a bank from a news site, and DNS is resolved inside the tunnel instead of on their resolver.

Domain names: hidden, resolved inside the tunnel
Destinations: hidden behind one VPN address
Still visible: that you are connected, and roughly how much data
A kill switch matters here — if the tunnel drops, this hop sees everything again

High exposure

The log you never asked for

Your provider carries every packet and, in many countries, is legally required to keep a record of where they went. This log outlives your browser history by years.

Every domain, every destination, with times and volumes
Retained for months or years, depending on jurisdiction
Can be handed over on request, often without telling you
Deleting your Google history does nothing to this copy

Protected

An encrypted line to one address

The log still exists, but its contents change completely: one connection, one destination, no domain names. What was a browsing history becomes a single line.

Browsing destinations: no longer in the log
Protocol-based throttling stops working
Still visible: that you use a VPN, and when
Where using a VPN is itself sensitive, obfuscation hides that too

Not in the path

Nothing here yet

With the VPN off, this hop does not exist. Your traffic goes straight from your ISP onto the open internet, carrying your real address the whole way.

Flip the switch above to see what changes — including what it costs you

You did not remove the observer. You chose it.

This is the honest centre of the whole diagram. A VPN does not make your traffic unobservable — it moves the one place that can observe it from an ISP you did not pick to a company you did. That only helps if the company is better, which is a claim you should make us prove.

We could see your real IP and where you are going. That is unavoidable in the design.
We publish an independent audit of what we do not keep
Signup collects no email, so there is no identity to attach to anything
Judge any provider on evidence, not on the word “no-logs” in a headline

Partly visible

Everyone the packet passes

Between your ISP and the destination, your traffic crosses networks belonging to companies you have never heard of. They see less than your ISP, but they still see who is talking to whom.

Your real IP address as the source of every packet
The destination, and the site name in the TLS handshake
Contents stay encrypted

Protected

Traffic starts at the exit, not at you

From here onward, packets carry the VPN server’s address. The networks in between can still see who is talking to whom — they just no longer see you as one of the parties.

Your real IP never appears past the VPN exit
Your physical location is no longer inferable from the address
The exit’s location is why picking a nearby server matters for speed

Fully identified

Where the profile gets built

The destination logs your address and builds on it with everything the page can measure. This is where advertising networks do most of their work.

Your real IP → your city, often your ISP, sometimes more
Cookies, local storage and third-party trackers on the page
Your browser fingerprint, which needs no cookie at all

Partly protected

A different address. The same browser.

The site now sees the VPN’s address instead of yours, which breaks location targeting and IP-based tracking. Everything that identifies your browser rather than your connection is completely unaffected.

Your real IP and location: hidden
Cookies: unchanged, still linking your sessions
Fingerprint: unchanged, still identifying this browser
Signed in? Then the account identifies you regardless of address

Every guide

What are you trying to do?

Twenty-two guides and tools. Type a word or pick a topic.

Searched for something and came up empty? Tell us what it was. Gaps in this index are more useful to us than compliments — most of the guides above exist because somebody asked.

Guides that say when to walk away

Several of these conclude that a VPN is the wrong tool for your problem. If you decide we are the right one after reading, that decision is worth more than a signup we talked you into.

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