A lot of sources I’ve found state these two as the difference: a regular proxy doesn’t necessarily use encryption and it only relays your browser traffic instead of a whole system (I find the latter limitation extremely strange).
So a VPN is essentially an encrypted system-wide proxy? That’s it? What am I missing?
No.
A VPN is quite literally a Virtual Private Network.
A VPN can be configured to tunnel ALL traffic, or SPLIT traffic, and actually has nothing to do with a proxy at all.
If you’re talking about those “COMMERCIAL VPN PROVIDERS”, they’re just a proxy that uses encryption to connect to them.
VPNs aren’t necessarily implemented system wide. Apps can be excluded from the VPN if that functionality exists.
SOCKS and HTTP proxy usage can be limited to certain apps or network interfaces.
Think of a VPN as an encrypted tunnel that your traffic is traveling down through until it reaches the exit point (the VPN provider’s server). Imagine that you are sending your password in plain text for email (forget about why you would do that in the first place) but with the VPN enabled. Your password would be secure from your computer all the way to the VPN server’s exit point, but not to your mail server as the VPN doesn’t encompass your mail server.
A proxy can have encryption too and relay your whole system. Whoever told you this is blatantly wrong
Yeah, I was talking about commercial ones. thx
Because that’s literally what they are. They are proxies that use VPN to connect to them. What else do you use on those commercial VPNs?
VPNs are used the world over by organizations linking sites to other sites, or by employees working remotely that need access to internal resources on the network. That’s kind of what VPNs were intended for.
The “commercial” people have bastardized the name and muddied the waters with users.