I’m going to need an ELI5 because I have read several explanations online, and I still don’t fully understand what makes them different. Why would you want to use one over the other? Don’t they both just forward your internet traffic? How do they work, in general?
* with a slight hiccup since nearly all web traffic is sent over HTTPS now - this distinction was a lot more significant ten years ago.
You won’t know what’s in the note, but you can snoop enough to know which two people are passing the notes back and fourth. Https won’t save you from letting me know you keep getting on furries.com or catching you downloading copyrighted material. A VPN will.
A VPN may protect you. It depends if you trust the host. Even with a trusted VPN, however, dedicated snooping at the exit node may secretly reveal my deep love of furries.com - thank god that’s a secret though.
that’s fine because i don’t download copyrighted material. everything on furries.com is freely available.