What’s the Difference Between a Proxy and a VPN?
Enhancing privacy is one of the essential concerns of Internet users. It is difficult to remain anonymous if websites can see your IP address and may even block it for violating their rules. For example, if you create several accounts on marketplaces or social networks, your IP address will be blocked. However, the software market offers several alternative solutions on how to bypass blocking. The most popular of them are proxy servers and VPNs.
Contents
Key Differences Between Proxy Servers and VPNs
Both the VPN and the proxy server are designed to increase user privacy, maintain anonymity, and bypass blocking problems. However, they have some key differences, which are well described in the article Difference Between Proxies & VPN — Octo Browser.
Safety
VPN uses effective technology for encrypting transmitted data. Therefore, it is more secure than a proxy server. The latter sacrifices security issues to mask their services and imitate the IP addresses of ordinary users.
Need for Activation
If you have connected a VPN, it will be active at the OS level. This means all your apps will work through this channel. If you choose a proxy, it will anonymize only a particular app. If you want your other applications to access the network through a proxy server, you will have to configure them separately.
Traffic Transmission Speed
Since VPN encrypts and routes traffic, data transfer is somewhat slower. On the contrary, proxy servers speed up data transfer due to the lack of encryption.
Device Memory
Since the proxy works at the app level, it will not require large resources from your device. On the contrary, a VPN requires large resources to perform encryption and decryption tasks.
Conclusion
If you need a reliable connection that cannot be interrupted, choose a VPN. If you want your IP address to be the least suspicious for websites, it is better to give preference to a proxy server.
This is super helpful
Choosing the right tool for your online privacy needs is crucial. I have learned that VPNs and proxy servers have their strengths, offering options catering to diverse requirements. This was something I never really understood.
Aaahhh…this is a good one to learn more, about proxy servers. In Uganda, VPN’s are a friend to so many of us as it’s the only safe way to access Facebook.
This was a super interesting read. I always thought they were different names for the same thing!
You’ve broken this down and made it easy for me to understand. I am not a technical person but I do know enough to know that privacy is so important. From what I’ve gathered from your post, I need to check into it some more and see what would be best for my needs (leaning towards VPN).