Can My ISP See What Sites I Visit With A VPN? FAQs.

Can my ISP see what sites I visit with a VPN? FAQs.

No, your ISP can’t see what sites you visit with a VPN. When you use a VPN, your ISP cannot see the content of your web traffic nor can it see where your traffic is going to or coming from. This means your ISP can’t see what sites you visit while you’re using a VPN.

Your ISP can only see the encrypted data that going to its servers. In general when your are connected to a VPN your ISP can usually see that you are connected to a VPN, but that’s about all it can see and can’t see anything beyond that including what sites you visit.

However, if you disconnect from your VPN and then go to back to any of those sites again, your ISP will be able to see what sites you visit.

In short, when you connect to a VPN server all your traffic is routed through that server meaning that none of your browsing data can be traced back to you.

This also means that your internet service provider (ISP) can’t see what sites you visit or that you’re even using a VPN.

In this post, I am going to answer some relevant questions regarding ISPs and VPNs and their roles or lack thereof in protecting your privacy while you’re engaging with the world wide web!

Does a VPN hide your browsing history from your ISP?

A VPN will hide your browsing history from your ISP.

It’s not as simple as that. It depends on what kind of VPN you have and what your privacy needs are. In other words, what do you want to hide from your ISP?

With a “true” VPN, yes, your ISP will be unable to monitor the sites you visit, but they will still know that you are using a VPN. Let’s run through a scenario that will help illustrate why this is true:

Let’s say you live in [insert country here] and you want to watch U-TV, an illegal streaming site, which is blocked by your ISP at the moment. You decide to use TorGuard, one of the most popular VPN services out there.

You type the site’s name into TorGuard, enter your credit card information, which they don’t have to see in order for you to use their VPN service, then hit connect.

A notification pops up saying that the IP address is being changed and a second later you’re at u-tv .com.

Your ISP isn’t going to know what this site is, but they will definitely know that you’re using TorGuard and so therefore a VPN.

You can also watch TV shows online at Netflix. Your ISP doesn’t block this site, but it’s blocked in your country.

You type the website name into your browser and get redirected to an American proxy server.

Now your ISP doesn’t know what you’re looking at, but they do know that you’re using a proxy. Why?

Well, when you type in the site name and hit enter, where does it take you? You guessed it: an American proxy server.

There’s no reason to have a proxy if there isn’t a firewall blocking the site.

You see how this works? A VPN hides what you’re doing, but not necessarily where you are. There are ways to make your location more private, too, something we discuss in another post.

If you do enough digging though, eventually you’ll find how to stay completely hidden online, but again, that’s something for a future post.

Do ISPs care if you use a VPN?

In short, yes. In long, it depends on what you’re using a VPN for and how much you care about your privacy. Your ISP will know you’re using a VPN though.

There are some cheaper services that masquerade as a VPN, what they do is give you an IP address from another country instead of proxying your connection through another server.

So if you’re actively using a VPN to hide something from your ISP, yes, the service you choose will matter. This may have been worded confusingly, but I hope it was helpful.

Is a VPN better than a proxy?

In terms of speed and flexibility, no. A proxy is just as good at hiding what you’re doing from your ISP but not necessarily where you are. They both have their pros and cons, but that’s for another post.

In short, a proxy is just as good at hiding what you’re doing from your ISP but not necessarily where you are. They both have their pros and cons, but that’s for another post.

How can an ISP detect VPN?

A VPN provides a secure connection to a network, which can be used for example to access a company’s servers. However, the encryption comes at the price of lower speed and additional costs. ISPs can use traffic analysis to find out if someone uses VPN or not. Some ways that ISPs may do this include:

– ISP can detect packets from VPN by checking the signature of packets.

– ISP can detect VPN traffic when it flows in between customer’s networks and its own network(s).

– By monitoring latency because all VPNs add delay to a connection.

– If the IP address is not the same as the IP address provided by the ISP.

– If the IP address is obscured by a VPN, it can detect the presence of VPNs.

VPN provides a secure connection to a network, which can be used for example to access a company’s servers. However, the encryption comes at the price of lower speed and additional costs. ISPs can use traffic

None of these methods can conclusively identify VPN use, but they can reveal that a user is using one and may be able to trace back where they came from.

Some VPNs introduce so much latency, however, that it becomes obvious to an ISP that they are in use (and can see that the latency was introduced by a VPN).

Does a VPN make you anonymous to an ISP?

No. A VPN will encrypt your connection to a VPN provider, but it does not anonymize you in any way.

An ISP can still see that data is travelling to and from a VPN server, but they can’t see what that data is or who sent it.

Anonymity refers to hiding one’s identity from the people they are communicating with.

For example, if you were to email someone using your real name and address, but referred to yourself as “anonymous” in the email conversation, this would not make you anonymous because your ISP can still see that you sent an email from your house to another person.

Does a VPN hide torrenting from an ISP?

It is legal to torrent in the US, but downloading copyrighted content without permission from the copyright holder is illegal.

Many ISPs monitor user activity and can throttle or suspend a user’s service for consuming too much bandwidth on peer-to-peer networks.

As a result, it may be possible for an ISP to detect if a VPN is masking torrenting activity.

So no, a VPN does not hide torrenting from an ISP.

It is possible for an ISP to detect the use of torrenting services, even if a VPN is masking that activity. As such your ISP may wonder why you are consuming so much data.

All in all, it is always best to check with your ISP to see if they are monitoring usage. As a result, you can avoid being throttled or having your service cut off because of torrenting on the side.

Can my ISP see what sites I visit with a VPN? Summary.

In summary, your ISP can see what sites you visit regardless of whether or not you are using a VPN. However, if you use a VPN, they will be unable to view the content of your requests.

Therefore, they won’t be able to see what site(s) you’re visiting

A common misconception is that ISPs can see what websites people are visiting when using a VPN.

In reality, ISPs will see you visit the IP address of your chosen VPN server rather than visiting a website directly.

For example, if you connect to a server in New York and visit google.com, your ISP will see that you’re going to an IP address owned by a VPN provider in New York instead of a specific website.

They can still see that you’re visiting a VPN

It’s important to remember that ISPs can still see that you’re using a VPN, because it is likely that your ISP assigns all their customers with a single IP address.

If there are 1000 people assigned the same IP address by an ISP and only one person is currently using a VPN, then it becomes clear that there is likely a VPN in use.

Finally, it’s also important to remember that even though an ISP cannot view the content of your requests with a VPN, they can still see how many requests you’re making and to which servers you’re making those requests to.

A VPN only encrypts your data “on the way” and “at rest”, it does not encrypt the entire process of you sending a request to a web server.

The bottom line: Your ISP can see that you’re using VPN, but they cannot see what sites you’re visiting nor your activity on those sites with a VPN.