What Does a VPN Hide?

A virtual private network (VPN) is one of the best tools you can use to protect your privacy, security, and freedom online.

A good VPN hides your downloads, searches, and browsing history from your Internet Service Provider (ISP), cybercriminals, government agencies, police forces, the websites you visit, and the apps you use. Without a VPN, each of these entities will know much more about who you are and what you do online.

What exactly a VPN hides often depends on who you’re trying to hide from. Although some websites and VPN service providers might falsely tell you otherwise, it’s important to know that a VPN won’t hide all your internet activity from everyone.

However, different entities have access to different pieces of this information. For example, your ISP won’t see your browsing history or any of your download activity when you use a VPN, but it knows your real IP address and your geographic location. That’s because your ISP is responsible for giving you the IP address in the first place, so you can’t hide it from them.

Unless you use a VPN with advanced obfuscation technology, your ISP will also be able to see that you’re using a VPN.

It’s worth emphasizing that using a VPN does not make you completely anonymous, either. Even though a VPN can hide some of your online identity and activity, it is still possible for governments, police, advertisers, and hackers to track what you do when you use a VPN.

To learn more about this, and how best to protect yourself, skip to our section on whether VPNs can be tracked.

A VPN will hide your IP address, your geographic location, your web browsing activity and more from your ISP and the websites you visit.

A VPN does this by encrypting your traffic and using a remote VPN server as the middleman between your device and the website or app you’re using.

Here’s a table summarizing exactly what a VPN hides and from who:

Data Type	Your Internet Service Provider (ISP)	The Websites & Apps You Use	Governments & Police	Hackers (on Public WiFi)	Employers & Other WiFi Admins
Your IP Address	No	Yes	Sometimes	No	No
Your Physical Location	No	Yes, with IP-based geolocation	Sometimes	No	No
Websites/Apps You Visit	Yes	No	Mostly	Yes	Yes (but be careful)
Time Spent on Websites/Apps	Yes	No	Mostly	Yes	Yes, with obfuscation (but be careful)
Search History	Yes	Yes	Mostly	Yes	Yes, with obfuscation (but be careful)
Downloads	Yes	No	Mostly	Yes	Yes, with obfuscation (but be careful)
Torrenting	Yes, with obfuscation	Yes, with Static IP	Yes, with obfuscation	No	Yes, with obfuscation (but be careful)

The tricky part is understanding who this information is hidden from.

It’s not enough to know that a VPN hides your location, you also need to know who it is hidden from and who it is not hidden from. Otherwise, you could put yourself at risk by believing you’re protected when you’re not.

In this section, we’ll detail precisely what a VPN hides, who it is hidden from, and who it is not hidden from. We’ll also explain why it is beneficial to hide this information with a VPN.

We’ll now take a more in-depth look at these, one-by-one. You can use the links above to jump straight to the information you’re interested in. Alternatively, you can skip to our next section on the information VPN services will not hide.

1. Your IP Address From Websites & Apps

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) automatically hides your public IP address from the websites you visit and the applications you use.

Your IP address is the unique sequence of numbers assigned to you and your internet connection. It works like an online passport, revealing details of your identity as you browse.

Your IP address is tied to sensitive information, such as your Internet Service Provider (ISP) and your rough geographic location. If you know someone’s IP address, it’s also possible to scan their router for open ports, which are vulnerable to malware.

Websites and apps use your IP address to register when you visit their site. This means they can record your activity and then link it back to you each time you return.

Websites regularly share this information with other websites, advertising networks, data brokers and online trackers, too. Collectively, they form comprehensive profiles of you and your browsing habits, using your IP address to tie it all together.

These entities can then track you across the internet, targeting you with personalized advertising, collecting additional information about you, and surveilling your browsing activity.

A VPN protects you from these advertising and surveillance networks by hiding your IP address as you browse.

When you use a VPN, your traffic goes via a VPN server on its way to the website or service you’re accessing. From the website’s point of view, this makes your traffic appear as though it is coming from the IP address of the VPN server, thereby hiding your personal IP address.

Using a VPN does not stop websites and advertisers from seeing what you do online, but it stops them from linking that activity back to you via your IP address. It therefore becomes much harder for them to gather information about you or surveil you.

Another benefit to hiding your IP address from websites and apps is that it lets you bypass IP-based bans. Often websites, such as chat forums, use your IP address to administer suspensions or bans to individuals who have broken their terms of use.

If you have been mistakenly banned, then using a VPN will let you regain access to the service because it hides your original, banned IP address from the website.

2. Your Physical Location from Websites & Apps

By replacing your IP address with the VPN server’s IP address, a VPN will hide your location from the websites you visit. This means you can trick streaming services into thinking you are physically located wherever the VPN server is located.

Websites and apps can vary their content based on your geographic location. Netflix, for example, has a different catalog of movies and TV shows for US users than it does for Japanese users.

These websites typically use your IP address to determine which country-specific content to show you. This is a process known as IP-based geolocation.

By changing your IP address using a VPN, you can change your Netflix region and gain access to streaming content from the VPN server’s geographic region.

Importantly, most VPNs let you choose which server location to connect to. This means you can pick which region-restricted content to unblock. For example, if you want to watch BBC iPlayer but you are not located in the UK, you simply have to choose a UK-based VPN server and you’ll be able to stream BBC content from outside the UK.

Streaming is not the only reason to hide your physical location from websites, either. Other forms of internet censorship typically rely on IP-based geolocation too. For example, Microsoft Bing has been found to censor autofill suggestions whenever the user’s IP address shows them to be located in China.

A VPN will hide your physical location from the websites and services you visit, but not from your ISP or employer. These entities still see the (encrypted) communication between your device and the VPN server. That means they still know your personal IP address and, thus, your rough physical location.

3. Your Browsing History & Search Activity from Your ISP

A good VPN hides your web browsing history from your ISP. This includes:

• The websites you visit and the apps you use
• What you do on those websites and apps (if they are not HTTPS encrypted already)
• How long you spend on them
• The timestamps for when your session started and ended
• Any files you download or upload

The VPN hides your browsing activity from your ISP by encrypting your traffic. That means it converts the contents of your traffic into an unintelligible string of letters and numbers that only the VPN server knows how to interpret.

Instead of seeing details about which websites you’re using and how long you’re spending on them, your ISP now sees a stream of indecipherable jargon. The only information available to your ISP is the IP address of the VPN server and the total amount of data being transferred along the connection.

The same is true for anyone with router-level access. That means using a VPN can hide your browsing activity from employers, parents, landlords, school and college administrators, Starbucks, and anyone else eavesdropping on an unprotected WiFi network.

Most ISPs keep logs of your browsing history whenever you don’t use a VPN. In many countries, such as the UK and Australia, they are required to do so by law. This poses a number of different threats:

1. Privacy. ISPs can share these browsing history logs with anyone they choose to. It is likely that your ISP is passing over information about your browsing habits to data brokers who then sell on to willing buyers – usually advertising companies.
2. Freedom. ISPs may be compelled to share your browsing records with government agencies and police forces too. Not only does this facilitate global mass surveillance, it also allows governments to implement censorship regimes that limit your freedom online.
   
   ISPs often work with governments to censor content and penalize individuals who access restricted information. They may even allow police to monitor your web traffic in real-time.
3. Security. Your ISP likely keeps logs of your historical web browsing activity in a database. If cybercriminals were to hack into these servers, they would gain access to that sensitive information.
   
   Unfortunately, these security breaches are not unheard of, either. Austria’s largest ISP, A1 Telekom, suffered one in 2019. In 2017, 8.9 million people had their data exposed when a Russian ISP was breached.
4. Performance. ISPs have been known to throttle the speeds of internet users engaging in high-bandwidth activity, such as online gaming and P2P file-sharing. While there are certainly legitimate reasons for internet throttling, it is thought that ISPs may also use throttling as a revenue stream.

VPN encryption hides your browsing activity from your ISP, allowing you to avoid censorship, surveillance, throttling, data theft, and personalized advertising.

If your ISP can’t see what you’re doing online, then it can’t throttle your gaming traffic, work with governments to implement censorship measures, or let police track you in real-time.

Furthermore, a VPN prevents your ISP from recording logs of your browsing history which can leave you susceptible to data breaches, be shared with advertising networks, or used to support government surveillance.

It’s important to note, however, that VPNs can’t erase ISP records of your previous, unprotected search history. In other words, if your ISP has logs of your web browsing activity from before your traffic was encrypted, then using a VPN is not going to delete those records retroactively.

Does a VPN Hide Your Browsing History from Employers, Your Router & Other WiFi Administrators?

VPN encryption can hide your browsing history from WiFi administrators, too. This includes:

• Employers
• Parents
• Landlords
• School & College IT Technicians
• Public WiFi Owners (e.g. Starbucks and airport staff)

In theory, anyone with router-level access is in the same position as your ISP: they can see that your traffic is going to a VPN server, but they cannot see where it goes after that.

A VPN also has the added benefit of letting you bypass any firewalls on the router, which may allow you to unblock certain websites at school and on college or workplace networks.

It is important to remember, however, that WiFi administrators can still detect that you are using a VPN, even if they can’t see what you’re using it for. You may therefore get into trouble if personal VPNs are banned in your place or work or study.

You should also be aware that a VPN is unlikely to hide your browsing activity when using a work or school computer. This is because administrators often have a way of monitoring your screen directly, either through remote access software, keylogging technology, or a screen monitoring program that is pre-installed onto the device.

Does a VPN Hide Your Search History from Google?

Using a VPN cannot hide your search history from Google or any other search engine. Google will always see your search queries because you’re using its service to make them. The question, however, is whether Google can link those searches back to you.

If you’re signed in to your Google account, then the answer is yes. Google is able to associate each search with your account and your previous search history. Thus, the first step toward hiding your search history from Google is to log out of your account.

Once you’re logged out and are using a VPN to hide your IP address, it becomes much harder for Google to link your search history back to you.

Even then, it’s likely that Google uses other ways to link your search history back to you, without needing to know your IP address or account details.

For instance, they can deploy sophisticated algorithms that use your device type, screen resolution, GPS location, behavioral patterns, and many other factors to identify you, if they so wish. It is therefore safest to assume that your VPN is not hiding your search history from Google.

The best way to stay hidden from Google is simply not to use it. We recommend using an alternative search engine like DuckDuckGo and a privacy-focused browser instead.

4. Your Personal Data from Hackers & Cybercriminals

Using a VPN helps to keep your personal and sensitive data hidden from hackers and cybercriminals in a number of different ways.

We have already seen that hiding browsing activity from your ISP can reduce the risk of data theft from security breaches, and that a VPN prevents vishing, doxing and DDoS attacks by hiding your IP address. But these aren’t the only ways a VPN keeps you safe and secure online.

A VPN also keeps your sensitive data hidden on unsecured public WiFi networks. In particular, it protects you from two main forms of man-in-the-middle attack:

1. DNS Spoofing: On unsecured public WiFi networks, it is relatively easy for attackers to hijack your DNS requests. They can then re-route your connection to a website under their control, without you knowing.
   
   A good VPN for public WiFi can protect you from these DNS spoofing attacks by encrypting your requests and resolving them on the VPN provider’s own DNS server. This stops the attacker from seeing your DNS request, let alone spoofing it.
2. Session Hijacking: Hackers might also steal the ‘session cookies’ that appear temporarily whilst you’re connected to a website’s server. These are small text files stored in your browser that authenticate and facilitate an individual session on that website.
   
   On unsecured WiFi networks, attackers can use packet sniffing or fake hotspots to steal these cookies and take over your session. If you were online banking, then they could even make bank transfers from your account.

By encrypting your connection, a VPN makes your traffic unreadable to everyone except the VPN server. This includes hackers on a public WiFi connection. It therefore keeps your personal information safe and hidden from criminals.

5. Your Torrenting Activity from Your ISP, Police, & Copyright Holders

A good VPN hides your torrenting downloads and P2P file-sharing activity from your ISP. This is helpful because ISPs often throttle (or even block) P2P traffic due to its high-bandwidth nature.

By encrypting your data, however, a VPN can hide the fact you are torrenting from your ISP, leaving you free to enjoy fast download and upload speeds.

It also means your torrenting activity stays hidden from police and copyright holders, too. Your ISP would typically work with law enforcement to issue you with DMCA notices, fines and legal action, should you ever mistakenly download any copyrighted material. VPN encryption stops your ISP from logging your P2P activity in the first place, which means it has no relevant information to pass on to these authorities.

Using a VPN will also help keep you safe from other torrent users on the P2P network. That’s because downloading and uploading torrent files normally means exposing your IP address to everyone in the ‘torrent swarm’.

A VPN keeps you safe while torrenting by hiding your IP address behind the IP address of your VPN server. This means that the IP address seen in the torrent swarm, and the one associated with the torrents you download, is the VPN server’s IP address and not your real one.

6. The VPN Traffic Itself from Your ISP

ISPs and WiFi administrators can’t see the details of your browsing activity when you use a VPN, but they can see that a VPN is being used. To do this, they can check the connection’s port number or, most commonly, use a tool known as Deep Packet Inspection.

Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) is an advanced method for analyzing network traffic. It uses sophisticated pattern-matching techniques to classify and categorize the ‘type’ of data being transmitted over the network, and is very effective at identifying normal VPN traffic.

The best VPN services can hide the fact you’re using a VPN from your ISP, government, and WiFi or network administrator. To do this, they use VPN obfuscation.

VPN obfuscation refers to the capacity of a VPN server to disguise your traffic as regular HTTPS traffic. When you use VPN obfuscation, DPI is much worse at detecting and identifying the VPN because your traffic becomes camouflaged amongst normal web traffic.

Here is our DPI analysis of VPN traffic without obfuscation:

Here is our DPI analysis of VPN traffic with obfuscation:

As you can see, our DPI tool was unable to detect VPN traffic when the connection was obfuscated.

A VPN can therefore hide itself from ISPs, governments, employers and WiFi administrators by using obfuscation.

VPN services can help to hide all of the information listed above, but they can’t make you completely anonymous online.

Here’s an overview of the things a VPN cannot hide, and who from:

Your IP Address or Physical Location from Your ISP

To supply you with an internet connection, your ISP has to know your physical location and assign you an IP address. There is therefore no way to hide these details from your ISP – not even by using a VPN.

In many countries, there is very little stopping them from sharing this information with governments, police, and any other third-parties willing to pay for it.

A VPN stops your ISP from monitoring and recording what you actually do online. When you use a VPN, your ISP knows who you are, but not what you’re doing.

Your Browsing Activity from the Websites and Apps You Visit

Using a VPN hides your browsing activity from your ISP and WiFi administrator, but it doesn’t hide that activity from the website or app you’re using – they can still see exactly what you do on their service.

That said, with a VPN turned on, websites and apps are less likely to be able to trace your activity back to you because they cannot see your IP address. They can see what you do, but not who you are.

Your GPS Location or WiFi Location

While many websites and services use your IP address to determine your physical location, it is also possible to use your device’s GPS data or WiFi location tracking. This is how navigation apps and food delivery services find your location.

Most VPN services work by changing your IP address, which means they won’t successfully hide your location from websites and apps that use GPS tracking.

There are only three VPN services capable of hiding your GPS location: Surfshark VPN, Windscribe and IVPN. Of these, we recommend Surfshark VPN. Our tests show that its GPS Override feature is very effective at hiding your GPS location, and it is one of our top-rated VPNs overall too.

If your website or app uses WiFi Location Tracking, then there are no VPNs that will hide your location. WiFi location tracking uses the WiFi access points (e.g. routers and smart devices) around your device to triangulate its location.

Google and Apple both use WiFi location tracking. It is an incredibly precise and robust way to track your location and, currently, there are no VPNs that can hide you from it.

Your MAC Address

Your device’s MAC address (Media Access Control address) is the unique, 12-character code that identifies the device on your local network. It is used to coordinate the transmission of information between local devices and to help prevent unauthorized access to the network.

Using a VPN does not hide your MAC address. However, even without a VPN, your MAC address is not visible to anyone outside of your local network. Therefore, it is not something you have to worry about hiding from ISPs, governments, search engines, advertisers or websites, because these entities will never have access to your MAC address anyway.

Your Total Data Usage from Your Mobile Carrier or ISP

VPN encryption prevents cell phone carriers and ISPs from being able to monitor your online activity. With a VPN turned on, they can no longer see which websites you visit, when you visited them, and how long you spent there.

However, a VPN doesn’t hide how much data or bandwidth you’re consuming. ISPs and mobile carriers can still see exactly how much data is being transferred along your connection when you use a VPN. In fact, our research has shown that using a VPN can increase cellular data consumption by 4-20%.

You therefore can’t use a VPN to hide from monthly data caps or get unlimited roaming data. On the contrary, you’ll actually end up reaching your data cap faster and scoring more expensive roaming charges.

Your Identity & Activity from the VPN Service Itself

When you use a high-quality VPN, the only entity capable of seeing both who you are and what you do online is the VPN service itself. Essentially, you are opting to show everything to the VPN company in order to stay hidden from everyone else.

Using a VPN therefore requires a huge amount of trust in your VPN provider. If it wanted to, it could see:

• Your name
• Your email address
• Your IP address
• Information about your devices
• Which websites and apps you use
• The timestamps for each session on these websites and apps
• Your download activity
• Any P2P and torrenting traffic
• The contents of any HTTP traffic (incl. usernames and passwords)

An untrustworthy provider might then sell that information on to criminals and advertisers, or even use it to carry out cyber-attacks against you. Indeed, this is precisely the business model for a lot of unsafe free VPN services.

VPNs have also been known to install backdoors into their service so that governments and law enforcement agencies can spy on user traffic. This is particularly common in countries where VPN use is restricted, such as in China.

Can the Police Track VPN Services?

The police can’t decipher encrypted VPN traffic that uses secure encryption such as the OpenVPN protocol and AES-256 cipher.

However, they can still track the activity originating from an individual VPN IP address. If you suffer from a data leak or log into an identifying account while using the VPN, it may be possible to track that activity back to you.

If the police have a court order, it’s also possible for the police to go to your ISP and even the VPN company itself for connection or activity logs. In this case, your ISP will be able to confirm you’ve been using a VPN service, and potentially identify which particular VPN you’ve used.

If your VPN service collects logs, they may be legally obliged to hand over information about your activity or connection information in these circumstances. However, the very best VPN services do not collect any information that might tie your activity back to your identity.

Can Your ISP See That You’re Using a VPN?

A VPN encrypts your traffic, which hides your browsing history from ISPs and anyone they distribute information to. When you connect to a VPN server, your ISP will not be able to see the contents of your internet traffic or its destination. However, your ISP will still be able to see that you’re using a VPN.

To hide your VPN traffic from your ISP, you can use VPN obfuscation to disguise your VPN traffic as normal HTTPS traffic.