In this paper, I will investigate whether VPNs really provide the privacy, security and performance that providers can assure. VPNs will also provide a barrier to local network attacks, ISP snooping, and also allow access to geo-restricted content by encrypting traffic between users and remote servers. But how are they working in the real world? I will measure speed and latency, read security literature, examine the credibility of logging policy, and trade-off economically. The paper will identify the advantages as well as the weaknesses to the use of VPNs. The findings indicate that VPNs always decrease throughput and introduce latency, although more modern protocols can reduce that performance penalty. They can help to resist the casual threats, though they are not able to prevent an endpoint compromise or sophisticated attack. There is a lot of variation in logging policies; independent audits are the only type of audit that I trust to ensure that a VPN does have a no-log policy. Free VPNs usually compromise privacy, but the paid versions usually have more reliable performance, at a higher cost. In general, VPNs are helpful in such daily activities as privacy and access to content, however, they cannot be trusted as the only method of protection. I would suggest choosing audited vendors, employing current protocols and consider VPNs as part of a larger, layered approach to security.