What a VPN Can and Cannot Do for Your Privacy

A VPN encrypts the traffic between your device and the VPN server and hides your IP address from the sites you visit. That is genuinely useful — especially on public Wi-Fi. But it is important to be honest about the limits.

What a VPN does

• Encrypts your connection in transit.
• Hides your IP address from destination sites.
• Helps protect you on untrusted networks.

What a VPN does not do

• It does not make you completely anonymous.
• It does not stop tracking from accounts you log into.
• It does not remove cookies you accept.

Use a VPN as one layer of a good privacy routine.