If you don’t use a vpn, your ISP can see what you’re doing.
If you use a vpn, your VPN provider can see what you’re doing.
If you buy a server and make it a VPN, it still has to go through your router so your ISP can still see what you’re doing.
Is there any way to stop both?
If you rent a VPS and run a VPN server on it (including DNS through the tunnel), then your ISP can’t see anything except an encrypted stream of info between your house and the server.
But your VPS cloud provider can see any traffic between your server and the internet.
That said, given most all site are using HTTPS, the only things these people can see are which sites you’re connecting to and for how long. They cannot see what information is being passed inside the connection.
If you want to get paranoid about it and don’t mind a substantial speed hit, you can use Tor (or even a VPN + Tor). The gov could still track you if they’re really trying, but it will effectively hide your traffic from your ISP or Cloud provider.
Well a remote VPS encrypted tunnel to your machine but the VPS provider I guess would technically have access to the machine
If you buy a server and make it a VPN, then your ISP cannot see what you are doing. If the server is a virtual private server (AWS, GCP, etc) then the provider can look at your server, but is not inclined to do so unless compelled by law enforcement.
Use DNs over https, your ISO can only see the IP of the server, but the DNS prover will be able to see what you’re doing
Any carrier can track traffic passing through them even the ISP’s that provides the uplink to your ISP. Though it doesn’t pay for larger carriers who exclusively provides Internet to ISP’s as they don’t handle individual residences. This same goes for the VPS provider. That being said, most of the time depending on advanced the provider is, it probably doesn’t pay to track the data because it’s just simply not worth it.
The reason why your ISP knows you are using a VPN provider is that the Provider’s IP’s are known to be a VPN. ISP’s tend to block those for various reasons on the last mile equipment.
What you want to shoot for is to find a smallish data center that’s been run by a few people for years that provides VM’s with public IP’s. Setup a VPN server there and use that as your VPN. The good ones have their own “ASN” and have multiple provider uplinks. Those smaller DC’s are wonderful to work with most of the time because they tend not to be owned by private equity groups or wall street. You could potentially score a deal with them too.
What will happen then when you VPN in, is to your ISP, it looks like you are VPNing to work and you are working from home. At that point, even the big Comcast, Cox, Spectrum and others will see that as it’s no touchy. VPN not working? Complain to your ISP that you work from home and ask why is the work VPN being blocked. Last thing these companies want is to get sued by businesses with plenty of legal resources.
Your ISP will see you are connected to a VPN. They’ll also see your activity, but not exactly what you are downloading/torrenting, but they’ll see file sizes, but still cannot interfere with you whatsoever because torrenting is completely legal and allowed.
The VPN’s purpose is to hide what it is you are downloading, and who is downloading/torrenting the content, in the event someone tries to identify you, they will not be able to.
If you use a vpn, your VPN provider can see what you’re doing.
You can severely limit what your VPN can see. Sign up without giving ID (all they care is that your payment works, pay cash or gift card or something), and use HTTPS. Then about all your VPN knows is “someone at IP address N is accessing sites A, B, C”.
I doubt the gov could track you that easily with tor
In this case the VPS provider can see what you’re doing, so it doesn’t achieve what I want.
Yes, I know that can’t see more than the metadata, and that probably no one is looking at it. It’s just the thought that they could look at it if they wanted to that bothers me.
TOR is good, but it is slow like you said. I’m not doing anything illegal so it’s not practical. I was hoping there’d be a way to achieve a good level of privacy on the clearweb too
I think that’s the same as a vpn but it’s just virtualized
Yes, they probably do bother what you’re doing, using automated systems to categorize what users spend time doing on the internet and selling this info, this wouldn’t cost much effort
Yes, I know that can’t see more than the metadata, and that probably no one is looking at it. It’s just the thought that they could look at it if they wanted to that bothers me.
Not just the IP, for TLS traffic the domain is also visible through SNI unless ECH is implemented.
At some point between you and the website, someone has to see at least the HTTPS traffic, DNS traffic, etc. Otherwise there is no way to route the traffic from the VPS to the destination
No, it’s a remote computer rented from a hosting provider. I guess you can run a non logging vpn on that and securely tunnel to your local Machine.
you think ISP’s have rooms full of people reviewing the porn sites you have been hanging out on for years?
dont be so paranoid; if you arent breaking the law regularly, no one looks at your travels…
Not when using http3 right?
It appears so. Thanks everyone in this thread for the responses, I now understand that what I am asking is impossible
Interesting, need to do some more research on that