Definition: VPN

(Virtual Private Network) A way to provide anonymity and privacy when online for a single user or everyone in the organization. VPNs provide a relay between the user and the destination, but in countries such as China and Russia, VPNs are government run or have "backdoor" access to all the commercial VPNs in their country.

VPNs use so-called "tunneling" protocols because they tunnel a private channel through a public network (see VPN protocols). Popular VPN services include NordVPN, ExpressVPN, IPVanish, VyprVPN and TOR.

Anonymity
There is always a VPN server between the user and destination, and the destination server only sees the address of the VPN, not the user (see below). VPNs can spoof their server addresses and allow access to restricted content in foreign countries. See anonymous Web surfing and proxy server.

Privacy
A VPN encrypts the user's data, especially necessary in a public Wi-Fi hotspot. The standard security protocol today is TLS; however, TLS does not provide anonymity (see below). See TLS.

An Enterprise Option
Within a company, a VPN carrier can connect multiple LANs together (see VPLS.)

Anonymity and Privacy

Anonymity is provided because the website can only identify the IP address of the VPN server. Privacy is due to the encryption. See proxy server and TLS.

Choose Your Server - Choose Your Country

People also use a VPN to give them access to websites in countries that restrict foreign users for political and other purposes. A requesting server from within the same country overcomes those restrictions such as this VPN example from Bitdefender.