I am new (not from IT) to the world of VPNs and I’m struggling to find a clear answer to my question: When I route all my internet traffic through a VPN service, am I essentially allowing the VPN company (e.g., NordVPN) to see all my data and online activities?
What are the key differences between using and not using a VPN service?
When I travel, I often need to connect my laptop to various networks, and I want to protect my internet access. I understand that the potential security risk lies with the internet provider, such as a hotel’s Wi-Fi service, since I don’t know who’s managing the network. Is the primary purpose of a VPN in this scenario to hide my online activities from the network administrator at the hotel?
Another question: why should I trust the company that provides me with the VPN service?
Thank you in advance for your help in clarifying these points.
FYI I moved this from the Support category to here because there really isn’t a support question. There’s nothing we can objectively help with. Optimal security is a question of how much risk you want to accept and that’s different for everyone. Most importantly, though, this is not a question specific to Ubuntu, any other distribution of Linux, or any other operating system.
To answer this question, let me introduce an organization that provides a free VPN (and other services) targeted at folks working on liberatory activism, which is to say that the accepted risk is assumed to be low. You can read all about them, but that’s not really my point. What is valuable here is all the things that they have written on the subject of VPNs, including the why, the how, and finer nuances and limitations of VPN security.
But if you are also required to protect data you can use Proton Drive, or a zerotrust vault Tresorit. But make sure you know how to recover if you forget your credentials.