It depends on what you mean by hack.
A VPN disguises where your computer is located, which is very useful if (1) you want to keep a government from knowing what door to knock down or (2) you want, for example, to pretend you are really in England so you can stream British TV programs that aren’t available in the US yet.
A VPN is not likely to help you much if you sign into the fake website that pretends to be your bank or if you open that email attachment promising you the dirt on Muffet McGraw. Malware doesn’t care the route it takes, as long as it lands in your hard drive. So if that’s what you mean by hacks, you should probably look into a virtual machine or sandboxing program.
I’m oversimplifying here, but a sandbox is like a hard drive within your hard drive. It lets you download stuff that includes bugs but isolates everything in a sandbox that empties out as soon as you close it, leaving your original hard drive unscathed. (If you decide you like what is in the sandbox, you always have the option of keeping it, of course.)
Well, that’s the theory, anyway. Nothing is invulnerable. I’ve read of fewer vulnerabilities in a stand-alone program like Sandboxie than in the browser-based sandboxes. But I am no expert in any of this, so please don’t rely on anything I’ve written.
(Except for the email I just sent you. I really AM the widow of a Nigerian prince who set up the lottery in which you were awarded 1 million courtside UConn wbb tickets that I will be happy to mail to you just as soon as you can provide a small fee so that my country’s customs office will release the package,)
