How VPNs work, the engineering behind them, and what to look for when you actually care about privacy.
What a VPN actually does when you connect, what your ISP and visited sites can still see, and what to look for when choosing a provider.
6 min readFoundationsEvery domain, every DNS query, every connection timestamp. What your internet provider sees without a VPN, where HTTPS falls short, and what a VPN actually changes.
8 min readFoundationsDNS translates domain names into IP addresses. It was built in 1987 with no privacy in mind. Here is how it works and why your ISP can see every domain you visit by default.
7 min readFoundationsFrom PPTP in 1999 to IKEv2 and OpenVPN today. The history of how VPN protocols came to be, and why it matters which ones your VPN supports.
10 min readLeaksA DNS leak means your browsing destinations are still visible to your ISP even with a VPN connected. How leaks happen, how to test for one, and how to fix it.
7 min readLeaksMost VPNs only tunnel IPv4. If your ISP gives you an IPv6 address and your VPN ignores it, your real IP is visible to every site you visit. Here is how to test and what to look for.
7 min readFeaturesA kill switch blocks your internet if the VPN drops. Without one, your real IP is exposed the moment the tunnel fails. Here is how it works and when it actually matters.
6 min readFeaturesSplit tunneling lets you route some traffic through the VPN and some directly. Useful for banking apps and local devices, but it comes with privacy trade-offs worth understanding.
7 min readTrustEvery VPN claims no-logs. Here is what the term actually means, what an independent audit covers, what to look for in a privacy policy, and the questions worth asking.
9 min readTrustWhere a VPN is incorporated determines which governments can compel it to hand over data. Here is what that actually means, what offshore changes, and what matters more.
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