Who Is My ISP (Internet Service Provider)?

Your ISP is your internet service provider. It is the company that provides you with access to the internet and often provides you with a router, too.

Most countries and locations have several ISPs to choose from, each with different subscription plans, access technology, and connection speeds.

In addition to providing individuals and businesses with access to the internet, ISPs can also offer data center and cloud services, entertainment software, email accounts, and other software packages.

Since the development of smartphones and mobile data services, many phone carriers and telecommunications companies are also ISPs.

The largest ISPs will maintain their own web servers and typically own the network infrastructure in their region.

It controls your access to the internet, which means your ISP can see everything that you do online. It knows important information like your IP address, your geolocation, and the DNS queries your devices make when using the internet. It is also capable of seeing and examining all unencrypted traffic that goes to and from your router and the wider internet.

Examples of Internet Service Providers

Most of the world’s largest ISPs are also telecommunications companies that offer a multitude of services.

For example, AT&T is the largest ISP in the United States. In addition to broadband internet, it offers telephone and mobile data services, as well as telecommunications and networking equipment.

Other popular American ISPs include Verizon, Comcast, and Mediacom. In the UK, the biggest ISPs by market share include BT, Virgin Media, Sky, and Talk Talk.

What’s the Difference Between Your ISP and Your IP Address?

While they may sound similar, your ISP and your IP address are different things:

Your IP address is assigned to you by your ISP. When you browse the internet, it’s freely visible not just to your ISP, but to anyone else who knows how to look for it.

In other words, your IP address can be used to trace your activity back to your ISP and eventually your identity.

By using a VPN, you hide your IP true address from websites and snoopers and replace it with the IP address of a VPN server. Your activity will be encrypted and indecipherable, even to your ISP – although your ISP will still be able to see that you’re using a VPN.

To quickly and easily find out who your internet service provider is, use the ISP lookup tool at the top of this page. It will also tell you information about your IPv4 address, and IPv6 address where applicable.

If you’re using your home WiFi network and your name is on the contract, you can also check your latest bill to find out the name and contact details of your ISP.

If you connect to or from a VPN and want to see if your ISP is hidden, simply refresh this page. When connected to a VPN server, the ISP checker tool will typically show you the name and location of the data center where your VPN server is located.

If you want to find out the IP address of your ISP’s DNS servers, disconnect from your VPN and use our DNS server lookup tool.

Who Can See Your ISP?

Unless you’re using a VPN, anyone that has access to your public IP address can find out your real ISP and location using a simple reverse IP lookup tool.

Every IP address is unique and belongs to a specific ISP, therefore an IP address is all that’s needed to find out someone’s ISP.

Your ISP is responsible for setting the price you pay for your internet, as well as the speeds of your connection. However, it also plays a large role in your online privacy.

As the company that handles all of your web traffic, your ISP can see almost everything you do online. In most countries, ISPs are legally required to collect this data, and some can even sell it on to advertisers and other third parties.

1. Your ISP Monitors Everything You Do Online

By default, your DNS requests will pass through your ISP’s DNS servers and network devices. Even if you connect to HTTPS-encrypted websites, this means your ISP can still monitor and record the domain name of every website you visit.

Depending on where you live, your ISP will almost certainly be required to record your browsing history for one year or more.

While it can’t see the individual pages you visit within that domain, it still knows you’ve accessed the website or application. If legally obligated, your ISP can also packet-sniff the traffic from your IP, at which point it can see everything you do online.

The vast majority of developed countries including the US, UK, Canada, and most European States have laws that require ISPs to collect and store user browsing data. This information is usually stored for a minimum of six months and analyzed for security and law enforcement purposes.

If you live in the US, your ISP even has the right to sell your browsing data to businesses for advertising purposes.

Torrenting trackers always use HTTP, which means your ISP can also see exactly which files you’re torrenting. If you’re caught torrenting copyrighted material, your ISP will send you a warning letter and can even initiate legal proceedings.

2. Your ISP Can Throttle Your Internet Connection

‘Throttling’ is the act of deliberately slowing down an internet connection. Your contract with your ISP may advertise speeds at a certain number like 50, 100, or 200Mbps, but there’s no promise that your ISP has to meet them.

What’s more, your ISP can choose to actively slow your download speeds if it thinks you’re using too much bandwidth. If you love to stream movies or download large torrents, your ISP can see that and choose to slow down your internet connection.

Not every ISP throttles, and having inconsistent or poor speeds is not a sign of throttling.

However, the only way to guarantee that your bandwidth-heavy activities aren’t being throttled is to use a VPN. IF your ISP cannot detect the type of traffic being sent and received, It’s unlikely it will throttle you.

Your ISP is the company in charge of your internet connection, so what can you do to hide your data from it, and how can you hide your ISP from other internet users?

There are two main solutions: using a VPN or using a proxy.

Using a VPN Hides All Your Online Activity from Your ISP

One of the only real ways to completely hide your browsing history from your ISP is to use a VPN service.

When you connect to a VPN service, all of your web traffic travels via an encrypted tunnel to a VPN server. It’s not just your browser traffic that is encrypted, but all of the data from your applications and online services, too.

Once your traffic is encrypted, all your ISP can see is the IP address of the VPN server you’re connected to. Your ISP can see that you’re using a VPN, but it cannot see what you’re doing while you use it.

Other users and the websites you visit will only see the IP address of the VPN server, which means they will be unable to work out who your real Internet Service Provider (ISP) is.

VPNs are legal to use in the vast majority of countries, which means your ISP can’t do anything about you using a VPN – it won’t affect your service or violate your contract at all.

Can Your ISP See What You Do with a Proxy?

A proxy can provide a lot of the same benefits as a VPN – but there are a few extremely important differences between proxies and VPN services that can impact your anonymity.

At their best, proxies will only encrypt the traffic from your browser window. Even if you set one up within your device’s system settings, the traffic from your other apps and programs will be unencrypted and reveal your IP address.

Not all proxies are encrypted, either. Some proxies use SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) to secure your browser traffic and hide it from third parties (including your ISP), but some don’t. It can often be difficult to determine if a proxy is actually encrypted or not.

Regardless of encryption, some proxies also forward on your public IP address, revealing your real identity and location. Only anonymizing proxies hide your true IP address.