What is VPN?

Now simple definition would be VPN is Virtual Private Network, but what does that mean?
basically it allows a user to browser the internet a bit more safely.

What it does

So VPN allows user to access contents of say a website they don't have access to or if you don't trust the internet itself it helps you to browser the internet without giving away your IP address

How it works

Now assume you want to search a website called us_only_website.com.
now if you try to search it then you will not be able to view it cause its a US only website. only a user in US can access it.
So your website query goes to the nearest ISP and sees your IP(192.168.x.x) is trying to call website us_only_website.com, it goes to the us_only_website.com and see it comes from some other country so it rejects it.

Now lets use our VPN app for this.
Now when you download a VPN you can set its location, lets say we set it to US.
now here is what happens,
we search us_only_website.com, now before it goes to the local ISP, first it goes to the VPN client app, now this app encrypts your query and everything and sends this to their VPN server in US.
so now your IP address with your encrypted data goes to your local ISP and sees you are trying to make a request to say My_VPN.com and it to points you to that direction and you reach that server, now when you reach the server,
it decrypts your data and sees you want to access us_only_website.com, so the server makes the request behalf of you and goes to us_only_website.com and see that request comes from us only so it gives you its resources like html css and all those other image etc. resources and sends it back to you encrypted so ISP again see the response from VPN server back to your IP address and it is received by your VON client which then decrypts your data and lets you see the content of us_only_website.com

Now that is why people suggest you browse the internet using a VPN cause you cant trust the general internet and can see what you are doing, VPN prevents that.

But in the end the request is received by your VPN server so they can see.

So please don't use any shady VPN cause if your reason is to browse the internet safely then your entire purpose is defeated.
OK also if you are in a private institution then even though they cant see what you are searching but they can can this IP address is making a request to a VPN server.