OpenVPN Support Forum

Someone made a post on another forum explaining their viewpoint on what a VPN is and I'd really love to hear what the OpenVPN staff has to say about this and some feedback and clarification from the people who developed OpenVPN who know...

THANKS

These are their comments below
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1. When talking about VPN providers listed across the internet, they say those are not VPNs those are connectivity services.

2. A VPN is to extend your private network over the internet via a secure tunnel to your home, other offices etc. A VPN does not include the internet.

3. Connectivity services are there trying to protect your ip by not letting the places you surf your real ip. With that encryption don't need to be super strong because your browsing the internet and viewing things visible to everyone. Your anonymity becomes important rather than security of the data transported. Basically its a proxy acting as a router where you are hiding behind the servers ip and it encrypts the data for you that's coming back.

4. If you want to transport you business sensitive info over the internet to your home pc the last thing a person will do is to connect via a third party server. You'll connect a straight encrytped tunnel thru to your home or other pcs to extend that private network. That's a VPN.

1. When talking about VPN providers listed across the internet, they say those are not VPNs those are connectivity services.

they are connectivity services using vpn technology

2. A VPN is to extend your private network over the internet via a secure tunnel to your home, other offices etc. A VPN does not include the internet.

you can redirect internet traffic to flow over a vpn, as a form of proxy. this is using features of the operating system, not of the vpn.

3. Connectivity services are there trying to protect your ip by not letting the places you surf your real ip. With that encryption don't need to be super strong because your browsing the internet and viewing things visible to everyone. Your anonymity becomes important rather than security of the data transported. Basically its a proxy acting as a router where you are hiding behind the servers ip and it encrypts the data for you that's coming back.

ok, i prefer good encryption anywhere that it is an option, but it is a valid point. you should also still use https, and you need to trust your exit node.

4. If you want to transport you business sensitive info over the internet to your home pc the last thing a person will do is to connect via a third party server. You'll connect a straight encrytped tunnel thru to your home or other pcs to extend that private network. That's a VPN.

correct, analyze your web of trust