My brother and I have a bet against my partner about how VPNs works. My partner was a “gifted child” with a very high IQ so he is a know it all to the next level. Can someone please explain what an IP is, an ISP and how a VPN works. In words he can’t argue with. I’m so annoyed. He keeps bringing up TOR…… changing a VPN of the modem… and other annoying shit. Please help me seem smarter than I am about this stuff. I need help.
This sounds like a bigger problem than we can handle but I’ll ignore that for now.
Basically an IP is the internet’s version of a street address. When transmitting data to and from devices, the sender needs to know where to send the data so an IP address is used. IP addresses loosely relate to global location, even at their most specific they only reveal what city the device is in and that’s not always reliable information.
An Internet Service Provider (ISP) is basically roads and bridges connecting an address to the “internet” which is basically just lots of other devices with IP addresses. ISPs talk to something called a “domain registrar” to figure out what IP you’re asking for when you go to a website, the registrars keep track of what domain name (website) goes to what IP address.
A VPN makes all your internet requests for you, and send that data back to your device. So websites and other servers your device would normally be sharing its IP with will instead get the IP of the VPN which gives you a layer of protection if you care. It’s important to note that the data your device sends to the VPN server and the data sent back to your device is encrypted. This can protect from some types of local hacking (but odds are extremely slim you would ever be hacked from this anyways, you’re better off relying on scratchers to pay your rent).
Here’s where things get interesting. If you don’t own your own VPN server somewhere and you’re using one of these dozens of VPN services that popped up, you have no way of detecting or guaranteeing that they aren’t logging your information. Remember earlier when I said some some local hacks are blocked by using a VPN? Well the data those hackers would be looking for has to be read on the VPN server for it to function. If the company is logging information for any reason, they could get hacked and you could be at serious risk of getting your passwords and other data in the hands of people with malicious intent. Several VPN companies have claimed they don’t log anything just for people to find out later that they actually were.
In my opinion, unless you’re using it to spoof your location to watch Netflix or try to see if you can get a better flight price, no regular person needs to use a VPN. I will say there’s a notable expectation to people who use public wifi often, but even then the odds of your passwords getting stolen are really really small.
But honestly, these are all things I think you could easily learn yourself with 30 minutes to kill and access to YouTube/Google.
When you send a letter, you have to write the recipient and sender information. So anybody that sees that letter (including the recipient) knows who you are and who you’re communicating with.
Now imagine that you don’t want that. So you find a service, say an alternative post office, whom you can send your letters to, and it will forward your letter to the recipient on your behalf, so anybody that sees that letter won’t know you are involved in it…
The addresses act as the IPs.
The alternative post office is the VPN service.
The letter is any data you exchange (a website, message, video streaming, etc).
This might not be 100% correct but I think that is the gist of it?
Thank you so much for taking the time to explain this haha. We were all just a little drunk and my partner can never admit when he is wrong… We were all using google but the guy was cherry picking sentences that he thought went along with his side of the argument. Anyways thank you.
Haha I’ve been there, both sides too. Hope it got worked out well 
That’s called confirmation bias, if you wanted to show off haha
Round two tonight with this info to go off of. We shall see Haha. Thanks again