VPN, in addition to masking your real IP, will also encrypt all of your Internet traffic, even from your ISP.

What does that mean? Encryption is a means of making your data unreadable to everybody except those with permission to view it (you and the other person you’re talking to; servers in this case). Your ISP (otherwise known as your Internet Service Provider) is not your friend. They will turn your Internet traffic data over if asked.

This will include, at a minimum, any DNS lookups (more on that in a moment) and any unencrypted (http://) websites you have visited. A VPN can prevent this by obfuscating your Internet traffic. It is a special ISP (of sorts) that should not be logging anything you do on the Internet.

Back to DNS (Domain Name Service). Just like with phones, the Internet uses numbers to connect to other servers. And like a contacts list, DNS is a way to map those numbers to names. For example, one of the IPs used by www.google.com is 142.250.72.132. It would be near impossible to remember all the IPs used by every website, so we use DNS servers to translate them for us. It’s more complex than that of course, but good to understand the basics.

Back to the topic of VPNs. As long as you use a reputable VPN that doesn’t log your internet traffic, you should be safe from pesky lawyers knocking at your door. The beautiful thing about a VPN is that typically you set it up and forget it’s there.

Lastly, my best advice I can give you is to trust your instincts. If something feels too sketchy, then don’t do it. Some things are not worth the consequences. Happy sailing!