Do I need a VPN?

[HoseKarer 0]

What are the main reasons for having a VPN? I don't travel often. I don't do anything illegal on the internet. I am trying to degoogle as much as I can on my PC and phone (no gmail, no sheets/docs), using Linux 95% of the time now. What are the main reasons I should use a VPN?

[pHxaq 4]

Some reasons:
- Hide your real IP address from (small) bad actors (you can't hide from government agencies, but you can hide from random people who wants to bother other people)
- Prevent (or make it harder) your ISP from seeing what you do on the internet (what web pages you visit, for how long, etc.)
- Reduce the amount of information harvested from your internet activity (though this only works if you do not log in with personal accounts)
- Reduce the amount of advertisement you see on the web thanks to the DNS filters provided by the VPN
- Access to servers/services from other countries when either someone from your side (ISP/Government) blocks those servers, or when the servers block IP addresses from your country
- Help others hide/obfuscate their internet activity by sharing the same exit IP of the VPN server you connect to
- Support the infrastructure of the VPN provider
- Support others who depend on the VPN provider to do their job (from regular jobs to more dangerous ones like investigative journalism)

A VPN is not an invisibility cloak, neither it is a service aimed for wrongdoers. 
If you are privacy conscious or concerned about it, then it is a nice tool to have, but as with any other tool, you must learn when/how to use it properly.  

[Staff 10689]

On 10/9/2026 at 5:52 AM, HoseKarer said:

What are the main reasons for having a VPN? I don't travel often. I don't do anything illegal on the internet. I am trying to degoogle as much as I can on my PC and phone (no gmail, no sheets/docs), using Linux 95% of the time now. What are the main reasons I should use a VPN?

Hello,

You do not need to travel or do anything illegal to have a reason to use a VPN. In addition to the points already mentioned by pHxaq, there are some practical uses:

• Accept incoming connections behind CGNAT. If your ISP does not provide a publicly reachable IPv4 address, a VPN with port forwarding can make selected services reachable through its servers. This can help with self-hosting,  game servers or peer-to-peer applications, including sharing Linux distributions. AirVPN provides this feature; not every VPN does. Any exposed service still needs appropriate authentication and security.
• Work around routing problems. A VPN changes the route your traffic takes. This can sometimes avoid poor ISP peering or a problematic path to a destination. It is not a guaranteed speed improvement and cannot fix congestion on your own access line.
• Protect more than browser traffic. A properly configured VPN can cover applications and system services as well as your browser, adding encryption between your device and the VPN server. HTTPS and other end-to-end encryption remain necessary: the VPN tunnel does not extend all the way to every destination.
• Reduce interference by the local network. For traffic carried inside the tunnel, the network operator or wiretapping entities have less ability to inspect and no possibility to alter application requests or DNS queries or traffic content (no possibility of injecting forged packets). This can be useful even without travelling. 
• For your de-Googling goal, a VPN is a complementary tool: it does not stop a logged-in service from recognizing you, remove tracking cookies, or prevent browser fingerprinting. Choosing applications and services that collect less data remains important. You also shift trust from your ISP to the VPN provider, rather than eliminating the need for trust.

Whether you need one depends on which benefits matter to you. Linux and privacy-conscious applications are useful choices, but they address quite different parts of the problem.

More information:
https://airvpn.org/faq/port_forwarding/ 
https://ssd.eff.org/module/vpn.html

Kind regards

 

[killabyte 0]

Nowadays with so many bad actors in the internet a vpn a must. Everything in the internet is free but it comes with a hidden price, so better protect yourself.