 that your data is... Imagine a tunnel between your computer and the website that you're visiting. So it's a little tunnel that is private and nobody can peer into that tunnel and see what you're doing. So the reason I would recommend a VPN is if you want to access things you can't typically access in the place you are. So for instance, when I was in China, I couldn't access various social media networks. So I used a VPN to get around that.