About CourtVPN

CourtVPN explains what VPNs actually do, what they don’t, and how to evaluate a provider’s claims — without reviewing or ranking any of them.

Why no reviews

Consumer VPN is arguably the most commercially distorted category in technology writing. The affiliate commissions are large and recurring, “best VPN” lists dominate the search results, and the ordering of those lists correlates far more reliably with commission rates than with anything measurable.

We could add another list. Doing it honestly would mean subscribing to each service, measuring throughput across servers over time, running leak tests, and re-testing as things change. We haven’t done that, and publishing rankings we hadn’t earned would be worse than publishing nothing.

So instead we cover the part the review sites can’t: the honest scope of what the tool does. That’s a difficult article to write when your revenue depends on readers subscribing to something.

The core idea

A VPN encrypts traffic between your device and a server operated by your provider, then forwards it from there. That’s the whole mechanism, and it determines the whole scope.

It follows that a VPN relocates trust rather than removing it. Without one, your ISP and the local network can see where your traffic goes. With one, your VPN provider can. Whether that’s an improvement depends entirely on which of them you’d rather trust and what you’re actually worried about — which is a question about your situation, not about the product.

What’s here

• Threat models — the specific situations people buy VPNs for, and whether a VPN addresses each one.
• Mechanism — tunnelling, protocols, DNS, and why leaks happen.
• Evaluating claims — what a no-logs policy is, what a third-party audit does and doesn’t establish, and where jurisdiction genuinely matters.

Our rules

• No provider reviews, rankings, or brand recommendations.
• No speed tests or prices. We haven’t measured anything.
• No claims about any named provider’s conduct. We explain how the claims themselves work.
• No affiliate links and no outbound links at all.
• We never overstate protection. If your risk involves a government rather than an advertiser, we’ll say plainly that a commercial VPN is not sufficient.

Start with what a VPN actually protects against.