Here are the most common VPN terms to help you better understand the space.

Double VPN

By default, most VPNs use a single VPN server to encrypt your connection.

But with adouble VPN– also known as multi-hop or double-hop – your traffic is encrypted twice.

Encryption

Encryption hides data in code, making that data appear random until it’s deciphered.

These countries participate individually and collectively in mass surveillance and intelligence-gathering.

Countries within this alliance pass information back and forth in the name of global or national security.

So folks with serious privacy concerns may seek a VPN provider withjurisdiction headquartered outsideof the Five Eyes.

Gateway

A gateway, or node, connects two different internet networks together.

Circumventing region restrictions is known as geo-unblocking.

IP Address

An IP address is a unique set of numbers used to identify every internet-connected gadget.

Jurisdiction

The country where the VPN provider is headquartered is known as its jurisdiction.

Logs

A VPN log refers to data that a VPN provider collects.

Usually connection logs – which include anonymous information about VPN apps and session lengths – might be kept briefly.

Usage logs, which feature personally identifiable data like IP addresses and internet histories, should never be saved.

In fact, I don’t recommend any VPN without a strict no-logs policy.

While zero-logging practices aretough to fully verify,auditshelp back up these claims.

This is useful in scenarios like on school Wi-Fi where VPNs don’t play nicely with the wireless internet.

By switching up the encryption and decryption keys, PFS mitigates situations where an encryption key may become compromised.

Protocol

VPN protocolsdetermine how a gadget communicates to the VPN server.

The most common modern VPN protocols are WireGuard, OpenVPN and IKEv2/IPSec.

OpenVPN is extremely secure, great for obfuscation but slower than WireGuard.

Most often, a proxy service isn’t encrypted whereas a VPN connection is.

Server count

A VPN provider’s server count is the number of servers it maintains and operates.

You’ll usually see this reported as the number of total servers and individual countries.

For instance, NordVPN has over 6,300 servers peppering 111 countries.

(Nothing is ever truly anonymous.)

The Tor online grid bounces your data off three or more servers, or nodes.

By comparison, a standard VPN connection uses a single server.

However, Tor slows down your internet connection noticeably more than most VPNs.