How does VPN actually work?

[FireInfusion]

I'm ashamed to admit, that I have no clue how VPNs actually work. For longest time I was convinced that VPNs were basically just VMs which basically accessed the server for you and forwarded data back to the PC. From my "extensive research"(AKA 30 minutes of googling), all I found was bunch of VPN ads and simple explanation of it's just a tunnel forwarding data from the host machine to the server. I'm curious how exactly it works, websites literally receive everything from the host machine including cookies/location/system clock and yet it appears as different IP and is more safe?

[emosun]

Basically the host machine does all the work and turns your machine into a terminal with an encrypted stream between the two 

[kirashi]

22 minutes ago, FireInfusion said:

I'm ashamed to admit, that I have no clue how VPNs actually work. For longest time I was convinced that VPNs were basically just VMs which basically accessed the server for you and forwarded data back to the PC. From my "extensive research"(AKA 30 minutes of googling), all I found was bunch of VPN ads and simple explanation of it's just a tunnel forwarding data from the host machine to the server. I'm curious how exactly it works, websites literally receive everything from the host machine including cookies/location/system clock and yet it appears as different IP and is more safe?

Cloudflare has a pretty good run-down of a variety of networking related topics in their learning center, including VPNs.
https://www.cloudflare.com/en-ca/learning/access-management/what-is-a-vpn/

[shadow_ray]

Another common way to use VPNs is to connect local networks together over the internet. For example a company with 2 offices can share access to printers and NAS-es on both networks. I also use VPN to securely connect back to my home network when I'm not at home. It can be useful for remote work as well.