Modern smartphones come with many built-in protections for user privacy and data security. We’ve written about them on Lifehacker . But if you want to keep your data even more secure and private, a VPN (or Virtual Private Network) is the best way to do it.

VPNs act as a sort of digital cloak placed over your device, making it harder for others to see what you’re doing. However, they don’t make you completely anonymous online, as we’ll explain below.

Once you choose a VPN service (see below for more information on this), you will be given access to all of its servers on the web, which are usually located in different places around the world. Instead of connecting directly to websites, you first connect to your VPN’s servers, and then to the pages on the web that you want to visit.

This makes browsing the web a little slower, but it also means that your ISP—and by extension law enforcement—can’t see what you’re looking at. Data is also encrypted, making it much harder to intercept, which is why VPNs are highly recommended when connecting to public Wi-Fi. They also allow you to spoof your location, which can be useful when accessing apps and services from abroad.