[ramzyo]

I've recently been describing what a commercial VPN provides to non-technical friends and family as a type of "global virtual Internet cafe" subscription. It's not inherently (i.e. due to technical benefits of underlying technology) any more or less secure than connecting to your home or work wifi/network, and the Internet cafe knows who you are and what websites you're visiting, but your ISP/employer doesn't (since you're "at" the Internet cafe, not on your home/work network).

Of course, your ISP/employer does know that you're visiting the Internet cafe, and in the case of work (and some ISPs) can stop you from doing so.

If you visit a website from an Internet cafe, the website may still be able to figure out who you are, just like they can when you bounce between different networks normally. And of course, if you login to your account on a website or put your shipping address or something in when buying something, you're self identifying (unless you have throwaway accounts or forwarding addresses or whatever). And finally, if someone really wants to figure out who you are to a high degree of confidence, they will.

I find this lands pretty well and is close enough to being technically correct without getting into the details that non-technical people would start glazing over if I got into.