I'm Dana Okafor, the writer behind the U.S. edition. I'm a Nigerian-American software contractor based in Chicago, and I work remotely — which usually means months at a time out of hotels, sublets, and airport lounges.

My VPN habit started the day a hotel Wi-Fi login page tried to push me a fake "update," and I realized how much of my work and banking I was doing on networks I didn't control. Since then I've tested VPNs the boring, practical way: on real public Wi-Fi, for keeping my U.S. streaming and bank apps working while abroad, and for encrypting a laptop I can't afford to have sniffed.

Here I write numbers-first and hype-free: what a VPN actually does, where it doesn't help, what the provider's own terms say, and what I'd personally turn on before joining a network I don't trust. I flag the legal and terms-of-service caveats plainly, and I don't tell you how to break any country's rules.