What does a VPN hide? (and what not)
-🖥️-
What exactly does a VPN hide? And what do you not hide?
We will do our best to answer these questions in this guide. We have a full FAQ section below, so feel free to skip the question that interests you the most.
What does a VPN hide?
Here is a list of the main things that a VPN hides:
1. Your IP address
When you surf the web without a VPN, everyone can see your IP address – websites, hackers, monitoring agencies, advertisers. The list goes on and on, really.
You don’t need us to tell you why this is such a big deal… but we’ll do it anyway.
Basically, it takes all the fun of getting online. What you browse on the web is not just between you and your screen. Almost everyone can associate your IP address with your online preferences.
For example, online advertisers will know that your IP address often communicates with sites that sell craft beer or Christmas decorations. So, they will start spamming you with targeted ads about these things. The sites you visit know your IP address, so they can serve you these ads.
Some people may find these ads useful. But for most of us, it’s downright scary and annoying.
Well, if you are using a VPN, this is no longer a problem. The service masks your IP address by routing your traffic through a VPN server. Basically, your connection will look like this:
You → ISP → VPN Server → Internet
You will basically communicate with the web through the VPN’s IP. Therefore, any site you visit will only see the IP address of the VPN.
Oh, and here’s another cool thing – by hiding your IP address, VPNs help you bypass firewalls. You’re not browsing the web with an IP address tied to its firewall restrictions, after all.
2. Your geographical location
When websites see your IP address, they not only have a way to track you online and associate your online preferences with you. They can also tell you exactly where you are from. In case you didn’t know, your IP address already reveals a lot of data about you:
- What country or city are you from?
- What is your zip code (not all the time, but still).
- Who is your Internet Service Provider?
If you’re not concerned about your privacy on the internet, it sounds harmless, right?
Well, this is not so. If websites know your geographic location, they can do this:
- Use geo-blocks to prevent you from interacting with various content – such as watching certain titles on Netflix or using sites like Hulu and Pandora.
- Use geo price discrimination to show you different prices based on your geographical location. For example, if you are from the US, you may see higher prices than if you are from Poland or India.
Since VPNs hide your IP address, no one will see your geolocation anymore. Any site you visit will think that your location matches the geographical range of the VPN’s IP address. So if you are using a US VPN server, it will appear that your traffic is coming from the US.
Translated, this means that you can use a VPN to unblock any content you want (movies, TV series, radio stations, news sites, etc.) and even save money (on car rentals, reservations, video games, or airline tickets, for example).
3. Your traffic
When you connect to the internet at home or use public WiFi, your ISP and cybercriminals can eavesdrop on your internet traffic. This way, they can see your online activities. Hackers can use this information to target you with MITM attacks. And your ISP can use this knowledge to selectively throttle your bandwidth.
All in all, it doesn’t look good on you.
So how can a VPN help?
It’s simple – the service encrypts your traffic end-to-end. This is just a fancy way of saying that no one will be able to spy on your traffic anymore. If they try to do so, they will just see gibberish.
Let’s say you are visiting Facebook while using a VPN. Anyone trying to monitor your traffic will not see connection requests destined for facebook.com. Instead, they’ll just see this: Bi1spxg7jr6pkgaX7tjzZQ ==.
The perks are pretty clear: with a VPN, hackers can’t steal your data, and your ISP can’t lower your speeds for certain online services.
If you would like to know how the decryption process works with a VPN, here is a brief overview:
- You are using a VPN app to connect to a VPN server.
- The two establish an encrypted connection. Any data that passes through it is subject to monitoring.
- When you visit a site, the app encrypts your traffic and sends it to the server.
- The VPN server receives your traffic, decrypts it and sends it to its destination (the site you want to visit).
- Then, the VPN server receives the content you requested. It encrypts it and sends it to the VPN app.
- The app receives the data and decrypts it so you can view it.
It seems like a long process, but don’t worry – it’s actually quite fast. It won’t even take a second!
4. Use Your VPN (Maybe)
We say maybe because not all VPNs can do this. But if the provider is using obfuscation, their service can hide the fact that you are using a VPN in the first place.
Basically, your ISP and government will not see that you are using the OpenVPN protocol. Instead, they will only see regular HTTPS or HTTP traffic (depending on which obfuscation method the VPN is using).
Overall, this is a very useful feature that helps you stay under the radar if your government doesn’t approve of people using VPNs. Or if your ISP has a problem with VPNs and is reducing VPN traffic.
Hide all your data with CactusVPN today!
If you need a reliable way to protect your online privacy and bypass annoying content restrictions, then CactusVPN is the service for you.
We offer strong encryption, secure protocols (IKEv2, SSTP, OpenVPN, SoftEther, WireGuard), and easy-to-use applications with an intuitive design for almost all platforms.
Furthermore, we also provide obfuscation through obfsproxy. So you can easily keep your VPN activities low!
Oh, and to make sure you have a really enjoyable streaming experience, we also offer high speed servers, unlimited bandwidth, as many parallel connections as you want, and a smart DNS to boot that instantly unlocks over 320 sites from all over the world.
Special Deal! Get CactusVPN for $2.7 per month!
And once you become a CactusVPN customer, we’ll still back you with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Save 72% now
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of frequently asked questions about what VPNs do and what they don’t hide. We’ve included questions we got from our readers, and found on Reddit and Quora.
We realize we already answered a few of them at the beginning of the article, but we figured some readers might just scan the article to the FAQ they care about most. So we decided to reply to them again in a nutshell to offer as many readers as possible – a friendly experience.
If your question is not on this list, please reach out to us in the comments. We will do our best to answer it as soon as possible.
Does a VPN hide you from your ISP?
A very vague question. Obviously, VPNs will not hide your physical location from your ISP (your home address). However, they can hide you from your ISP by:
- Hide your traffic, so they can’t analyze your data packets anymore to see what web services you’re using.
- Hide your browsing. Basically, your ISP will not know which sites you visit. They will only see that you are connected to a random IP address (the VPN’s IP).
In general, using a VPN will prevent your ISP from knowing your online preferences (and possibly selling this data to advertisers).
Does a VPN hide your IP address?
Yes, of course. The VPN intercepts connection requests (containing your IP address) to its VPN server, and then forwards them to the web using the server’s IP address.
So when you are online and using a VPN, any website you visit will only see the IP address of the VPN. You remain “hidden”.
Does a VPN hide your IP address from your ISP?
No, VPNs can’t do that (there are no tools that can do that). We’ve seen a surprisingly large number of people who actually thought that if they used a VPN, their ISPs wouldn’t know what their original IP addresses were.
It just doesn’t work like that. VPNs can only hide your IP address from the rest of the Internet. Your ISP will always be able to see your IP address while using a VPN. Their dashboard might look something like this:
| Source IP (your IP address) | Destination IP address (VPN IP address) |
| 1.2.3.4 | 5.6.7.8. |
In addition, do not forget – it is your Internet service provider that assigns you your own IP address. They obviously have a database where they keep track of which clients get IP addresses.
However, you don’t have to worry about that. Just because your ISP can still see your IP address when using a VPN doesn’t mean you don’t get any privacy. They still can’t see your browsing online.
Does a VPN Hide Your Search History?
Yes, you could say it somehow does. Since your ISP will not be able to see the websites you are browsing, they will not know what to look for on the Internet. Also, websites and advertisers will not be able to associate your searches with your IP address.
But using a VPN will not hide your search history from your browser or any websites may place cookies on your device. To protect your privacy from that, you should also use Incognito/Private Mode. Or, at least, you should clear your browser’s cookies and cache regularly.
Does a VPN hide torrents?
Yes, a VPN can make your torrenting activities more private by preventing your ISP from seeing that you are torrenting.
Don’t forget – your ISP can detect torrent traffic if they are actively searching for it. High bandwidth usage, multiple TCP connections, and parallel upload streaming are usually a dead gift.
If you use a VPN, they won’t be able to see any of that. The service encrypts your traffic, so your ISP will not know that you are torrenting.
Does a VPN hide your location?
Yes. VPNs mask your IP address, revealing your geographical location. Anyone who tries to find your location while using a VPN will only see the location of the VPN server you are using.
Does a VPN hide the websites you visit?
Yes. Only your ISP and network administrator will see that you are connecting to the VPN’s IP address. They will not see the final destination of your connection (the sites’ IP addresses).
So if you’re visiting Facebook, your connection will look like this:
Your IP Address -> ISP Network -> VPN Server IP Address -> Facebook IP Address
Your ISP and network administrators will only see this:
Your IP address → VPN server IP address
They will not see this:
Your IP address → Facebook’s IP address
Does a VPN Hide Your MAC Address?
No, a VPN can’t do that. Unlike your IP address, your MAC address is not assigned by your ISP. Instead, your device manufacturer sets it. Also unlike your IP address, your MAC address does not go to the World Wide Web. It only stays on your local network. Therefore, a VPN cannot route it through its servers to hide it.
But the problem takes care of itself as you can see. Your MAC address is not visible to websites, so your privacy is not at risk even though a VPN can’t hide it.
People used to worry that IPv6 addresses might be leaking from MAC addresses some time ago. But the IPv6 Privacy Extensions update took care of that. If you’re still worried about it, no problem – here’s how to completely disable IPv6.
Does a VPN Hide Your VPN Use?
Yes, but only if the VPN uses obfuscation to hide its traffic. And usually only if you’re using the OpenVPN protocol since it has a unique digital signature that obfuscation can hide.
You can also get some confusion if you are using SSTP because it uses port 443 (HTTPS port) and SSL encryption. However, it is not a very popular choice because it is closed source and owned only by Microsoft. Also, it is only available on Windows devices.
If you’re using other protocols, obfuscation won’t really help because most of them use dedicated ports (L2TP/IPSec uses UDP ports 500, 4500, and 1701, for example). And some protocols were not meant to be used with obfuscation (eg WireGuard).
Do …
[ad_1]
Don’t forget to share this post with friends !
