What a VPN is, and what it is not.

What it does

A VPN, a virtual private network, puts an encrypted tunnel between your device and a server run by the VPN provider. Everything you send goes into the tunnel first, comes out at the server, and only then heads to the site you asked for. The site sees the server's address, not yours. Anyone on your local network sees encrypted traffic, not the sites you visit.

That is the whole mechanism. Everything a VPN is good for follows from it.

What it is good for

• Public wifi. The café, the airport, the hotel. Whoever runs the network, or is sitting on it, cannot read your traffic.
• Your ISP. It sees a connection to one server, not the list of everything you do.
• Location. Sites see the server's country. Choose a server elsewhere and you appear to be there.
• Blocked networks. If a network blocks a site, the tunnel usually gets through, because the network only sees the tunnel.

What it is not

• It is not anonymity. The VPN provider can see your traffic where your ISP could before. That is why the no-logs policy matters more than anything else on the feature list.
• It is not antivirus. A VPN encrypts traffic. It does not stop you opening a bad file.
• It is not a way to break the law. It is a way to keep the law-abiding parts of your life private.

How Briva approaches it

We do not record what you do online. We do record the minimum needed to run a subscription: your email, which devices are on the account, and when they were last used. The network we build on is operated by a partner that is independently audited for the same no-logs practice.

The kill switch is on by default, because a VPN that fails open is worse than no VPN: you believe you are protected when you are not.