Does VPN give me a different public IP address?

A VPN is a Virtual Private Network, which means it uses encryption technology to create a connection to some other location, and then passes your other data through that “tunnel” to the other side.






There are many uses of VPNs, including securing access to internal corporate data while still making it available to remote-access users.

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The common, non-tech-user, use of the term, however, uses one of the byproducts of that service, so to speak. One of the modes of VPN tunneling is to have all traffic sent out of your computer, while the VPN is up, forced to send that traffic through the tunnel. This includes all your Internet traffic.

So what a number of companies now do is sell that feature as their entire service. You sign up with them, and they set up a VPN tunnel between you and them. While that VPN tunnel is up, all your Internet traffic goes to them, and then they route it out of their network, internally. So, you use your public IP address to connect to their side of the tunnel, and then your Internet traffic is sent from one of theirs. And since so many people are using the same service, there is no way for anyone outside of the VPN company, and you, to know where the connection is actually coming from 

Summary

This also explains why, depending on the service, you can have your sessions showing up as coming from different cities, states or even countries. It all depends on the location of the “exit node” they use for your connection.