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When you work from the road, you are constantly on networks you do not own — campground wifi, a café connection, a library hotspot. Any of them could be watched. IPVanish keeps your banking, work logins, and traffic private on open wifi, and lets you work as if you were home. We use it for exactly this.
Why it matters on the road
A home network you control; a campground network you do not. Open and shared wifi is the default of van life, and it is the one place your traffic is most exposed. A VPN encrypts the connection between your device and the internet, so an open network cannot read what you send. For a few dollars a month it is the cheapest insurance on the connectivity stack, and the one that runs over every other layer — phone hotspot, Starlink, or a café's wifi alike.
Setting it up
Install it on the devices you actually work from, and set it to connect automatically on untrusted networks so you do not have to remember. It runs quietly in the background; you notice it only when you would otherwise have been exposed. The connectivity guide covers how it sits over the rest of your setup. Do the install while you still have a solid connection, because configuring anything is harder on the patchy wifi it is meant to protect.
The short version
Open campground and café wifi is untrusted by default, and a VPN like IPVanish is the cheap fix that keeps your traffic private on it. Install it on your work devices, set it to connect automatically, and let it run over every connection. Read the connectivity guide for how it fits with a SIM and satellite.