Can my ISP see what I do if I have a VPN?

[EpicSurvivor]

I don't plan on doing anything shady of nature, but there is a Humble Bundle right now for $1 for some software and 1 of them is a 1 month subscription to a VPN.

I was just curious I know in the past around 2013 I downloaded some songs and a few hours later my ISP (Current) sent me a message warning me that they saw it and I had a 3 strike rule.

What are your thoughts on this?

 

[mnewsham]

Theoretically an ISP could inspect every packet going through their network and assuming you don't use a particularly robust encryption on your VPN traffic, it could potentially be seen by your ISP. Realistically this will never happen.

In practice, using a VPN will pretty much 100% hide downloads from your ISP.

 

[EpicSurvivor]

Theoretically an ISP could inspect every packet going through their network and assuming you don't use a particularly robust encryption on your VPN traffic, it could potentially be seen by your ISP. Realistically this will never happen.

In practice, using a VPN will pretty much 100% hide downloads from your ISP.

Hahahah. Wow, I think I'll just pass to be honest. That way I'll stay nice and clean and out of trouble.

Thank you for your help. Not going to bother.

 

[JackMDS]

Every time you go to a VPN your ISP knows where and when.

On the hand the VPN Provider knows everything and can save every bite that you chew for Good or Bad.

 

[EpicSurvivor]

Every time you go to a VPN your ISP knows where and when.

On the hand the VPN knows everything and can save evry bite that you chew for Good or Bad.

Presto! Thank you again. Going steer free from this one. Save my self the trouble. Appreciate the comments gentleman

 

[mnewsham]

Every time you go to a VPN your ISP knows where and when.

On the hand the VPN Provider knows everything and can save every bite that you chew for Good or Bad.

Considering the company in question is PIA, and they've now been challenged publicly twice by the FBI in court and both times they assert they keep no individual customer logs and as such any request from the government for information on a specific customer is impossible. I have no doubts, he would be "safe" using PIA.

But really, it just depends what you're gonna be doing with your VPN, PIA is by far one of the best and cheapest if you decide you do need a VPN in your life and I can easily recommend them.

 

[robvas]

What if your VPN is setup on a VPS? Those guys can't possibly log everything that comes in/out

 

[EpicSurvivor]

Considering the company in question is PIA, and they've now been challenged publicly twice by the FBI in court and both times they assert they keep no individual customer logs and as such any request from the government for information on a specific customer is impossible. I have no doubts, he would be "safe" using PIA.

But really, it just depends what you're gonna be doing with your VPN, PIA is by far one of the best and cheapest if you decide you do need a VPN in your life and I can easily recommend them.

Yeah I am honestly not going to bother then, not worth the risk involved to be honest. Thank you guys.

 

[JackMDS]

LOL, and do you know how many VPN services are Running as an Undercover operation of many Governments all over the world.

In sum One should Not be engage in Doings that he/she are Not proud of to begin with. -

 

[mnewsham]

LOL, and do you know how many VPN services are Running as an Undercover operation of many Governments all over the world.

In sum One should Not be engage in Doings that he/she are Not proud of to begin with. -

Does it matter what other companies are doing when we're talking about ONE specific company?

Your posts are always a little bit special

 

[JackMDS]

Your posts are always a little bit special

You are right they are "Special". That is a result of being a Computer engineer for 50 years specializing in multiple aspect of Electronics, and computers.

Thus my "Special approach is General. I.e. provide some back ground and education too.

In contrast, as to many that have one (or few) computers and other hardware that somehow work for them and their approach is the "le ta c'est moi (Louis XIV absolute Monarch of France in the 17th Century)".
I.e., What ever works for me should work for every one else.

After all every thing can be found (Google) on the Internet, but Thinking, Understanding and Judgement are personal assets and can not be obtained from 3rd party recommending one Brand or the other.

 

[mnewsham]

-snip-

Yeah...that must be it.

 

[boomerang]

LOL, and do you know how many VPN services are Running as an Undercover operation of many Governments all over the world.

I hope everybody reads what you just said. In our current climate of mass surveillance, that VPN services are even available should be suspect. Do people really believe that nations under siege from those that wish to conquer them through one means or another would even allow services to exist through which bad actors could hide their communications? There ain't a snowball's chance.

 

[Charlie22911]

In addition to the above notes on VPN host logging, DNS leaks can be an issue which IIRC is a common problem in Windows 10.

If you want something more resistant to surveillance you could try TOR. Onion routing is actually pretty robust and a great decentralized privacy tool, though I'd be weary running an exit node since traffic will appear to originate from your IP; but I digress.

 

[danielcooper]

being a Computer engineer for 50 years specializing in multiple aspects of Electronics, and computers.

From your experience any suggestion, how can we encrypt our packet(or simply hide our information) going through their network?

 

[mnewsham]

From your experience any suggestion, how can we encrypt our packet(or simply hide our information) going through their network?

Using a VPN.

If you're using a VPN with even low-end encryption no one is actually going to go through the effort of de-encypting your packets. Sure, your ISP in theory COULD, but in reality they never will. The only people who need to be worried about that are people planning legitimate terrorist acts, in which case they're generally using potentially multiple VPNs paid for with anonymous crypto-currency on top of end to end encrypted chat services.


Encryption is all just math, if you spend enough time working through it, eventually it will be broken. No encryption is 100% secure, but the effort needed to brute force modern encryption algorithms is simply far beyond what would be exhausted on the average person, even if a government or company had the capabilities, they'd need a damn good reason to dedicate the resources that would be required.
There are the conspiracy theorists who believe all modern encryption is designed with built in backdoors for government use, but in my opinion that's mostly a cop-out excuse to be paranoid about any and everything because government = bad.