VPNs work by creating a tunnel between the device you are on and your connection to the internet. In terms of the specifics of how they do this, you might want to think of a simple internet search coming from your home computer as a person looking for information out there in the ether. If you are using a VPN service, that "person" gets wrapped in a disguise and sent to a server that is maintained by your provider. The disguise is known as encrypted encapsulation.Once the "person" reaches the server, the VPN provider – and only the VPN provider – can recognize the person beneath the disguise and get it to where it needs to go on the internet. But before it leaves, it is once again wrapped up in an encrypted packet. The process works in reverse as the information you requested is sent back to you. And it's all done in a matter of seconds.There are a variety of protocols that different VPN services use to encrypt data but the most secure and popular at the moment are OpenVPN and IKEv2/IPSec. If your VPN service uses these, then you know your activity is being encrypted by the same technology used by militaries around the world. WireGuard is an upcoming VPN technology that is poised to become the new gold standard thanks to its improved speed, but at the moment, there are only a handful of companies using it.