Basically, for right now, my only means of getting on the internet are my phone’s cell data, and my family’s hotspot that they use as a “router” for “wifi” in the house. The hotspot has its own sim card and unlimited plan and is basically just another phone.
So my main question is: is it even worth it for me to use a vpn at all right now? My intuition was that if anything would work, it would be turning data off on my phone and just using the hotspot. But I have no clue, maybe that would be useless too.
I’d also like to know a bit more about how this actually works. I know-ish how vpn’s and routers work, I think; encrypting data to send through the isp to the other side of the vpn, where it gets decryoted and sent to wherever it was going. But I don’t really know if it’s the same with cell data or not.
Anyways, thanks for reading if you did. I look forward to any help I can get.
Depends on why you’re using a VPN. What goal are you trying to achieve? What purpose does the VPN serve you?
A VPN will work the same whether you’re on wifi or using your phone’s cell data.
Just like with any other ISP, it will appear to your wireless provider that all of your internet traffic is going to the VPN’s server, instead of whatever website/etc you’re using. Any data caps you have will still work the same as before.
The biggest functional difference for most users is probably video streaming services. Wireless providers like to limit bandwidth on your connections to Youtube/Netflix/etc, so you can’t stream higher resolutions without constant buffering and pauses. But with a VPN, they can’t do this directly. The streaming services also tend to block VPN users, so you’d need a VPN that actively works to keep ahead of their blacklists. Those that do usually advertise it.
The hotspot that you use will act as a wifi network (The same as any other internet) with the only difference being it connects to a mobile network.VPN will work the same as if you were connected to any other network. cell data does not change the functionality of the VPN. It depends on what you use a VPN for to whether it will be worth it to use one.