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?
The big difference is that VPNs encrypt all traffic between your computer and the VPN computer, while this is usually not the case with a proxy. The lack of encryption and decryption can make a proxy slightly faster, but obviously less secure if you’re tying to hide what you’re doing.
ELI5 version:
VPN - You write a note in code, pass it to your friend who then decodes it, and then gives the decoded note to your crush. Your crush doesn’t know it came from you, and if the teacher caught you passing the note to your fiend, they wouldn’t be able to tell what it was.
Proxy - You just pass a note to your friend, who then hands it to your crush. Your crush doesn’t know if came from you, but If the teacher catches you, they can read it. It’s faster than having to write in code and decode.
* 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.
I would recommend actually getting into contact with your crush. You could then establish means to use OTP and won’t need to trust your friend at all.
You know, exchange each in and out OTP keys each of you will use, agree on a checkerboard to use, write a codebook for common words/phrases you will use, how you’ll notifiy the other party of potentially compromised key(s).
Wrap it before they tap it?
But then, there would be no difference between an encrypted proxy and a VPN. But that’s not the case.