How vploq works
vploq is a private link back to your own home network. Unlike a commercial VPN, there is no shared server you rent space on: the thing you connect to is a device on your own router, and the connection runs between your app and that box. This page describes the whole model, which is enough to make sense of every other page.
The device is the destination
A commercial VPN sends your traffic to a company's server. vploq does not. You plug a small vploq device into your router at home, and your phone and laptop connect back to it.
That difference is the whole product. Because the destination is your own home, "connected" means your printer, your NAS and your router answer as if you were sitting in the living room, and, if you choose, your internet browsing comes out of your home connection too.
Each device carries a factory identity that can be claimed by exactly one account. The identity is checked rather than typed in, which is why a setup can fail with "this device was not found" or "has been reported lost", and why you release a device before selling it so the next owner can claim it.
The two paths
Once you connect, your app and your device have to find each other across the internet. There are two ways that can happen, and vploq always prefers the first.
A direct connection is peer to peer. Your app and your device talk straight to each other, and the traffic does not pass through vploq's infrastructure at all. It is the faster path, with fewer hops and lower latency, and the app tries for it whenever the network allows.
A relayed connection is what happens when a direct one is impossible, which many mobile networks and corporate firewalls make it. An encrypted relay then forwards the packets between the two ends. It moves ciphertext from one side to the other and cannot read what passes through it.
You do not choose between these. The app negotiates the best available path and falls back to the relay silently if it cannot build a direct one. A relayed connection is normal and is not a fault. The Connecting page shows which path is in use.
What stays private
The tunnel between your app and your device is encrypted end to end with WireGuard. Encryption happens on your app and is only undone on your device, which has two consequences worth stating plainly:
- The networks you pass through, such as café Wi-Fi or an office LAN, see encrypted packets and their size and timing, never their contents.
- The relay, when one is used, forwards that same ciphertext. It cannot read your traffic.
vploq's infrastructure does handle the small amount of information needed to route a connection and keep the service working. Exactly what that is, why, and how long it is kept is set out in the privacy policy, which is the authoritative document rather than this summary.
Your internet, or just your devices
A connection can do one of two things, and the app tells you which:
Most of the time the connection carries everything: local devices and your internet browsing, which exits through your home connection. Sometimes it is device access only, meaning you can reach the machines on your home network but your browsing goes out through whatever network you are physically on. That happens when the vploq you are connected to is shared with you rather than owned by you, or when it is not set up to route internet traffic. The app marks this state so you do not have to guess.
Accounts, devices and teams
Your account is the thread that ties everything together. Sign in on a second phone or a laptop and you see the same devices and teams, with nothing set up twice.
A team lets more than one person use the same vploq without anyone sharing a password. The owner invites people by email, and each has their own account and their own app. See Teams.
Where to go next
- Install the app and set up your vploq
- Connecting: the button, the statuses, direct vs relayed
- Your data: export, deletion, releasing a device
- Privacy policy: the authoritative account of what is processed