How does a VPN work? Cost?
VPN stands for “Virtual Private Network”. It’s often described as a tunnel that your data flows through. What it really does is it encrypts your information and omits anything in the encrypted packages that identifies your IP address. That way, if anyone somehow decrypted the data, they still wouldn’t know where it came from. The VPN provider knows who you are, but it’s not in the data flowing out.
Your data flows through a server somewhere (mine is in Bolivia) and then goes to the destination you sent it. So the FR server thinks this information is coming from Bolivia.
Prices range from $75 to $150 a year. ExpressVPN is about $100 a year.
Note: if you turn on location services on your phone, then your location is transmitted outside the VPN.