Who Can See Your Internet History?

At a Glance

Are you concerned that your ISP, Google, hackers, and other nosy types are following you around on the internet? Who exactly has access to your internet history and what do they do with it?

In this article, we’ll discuss how and why nosy folks want to see your internet history. I’ll also explain what you can do to prevent being tracked. Protecting your internet history from being monitored protects your usage privacy, makes it tougher for advertisers to target you, and prevents your past internet antics from coming back to bite you later.

Which Features Should a VPN Have To Protect My Internet History?

To stop ISP tracking and to provide an enjoyable online experience, a VPN would need to have the following features:

• Strong encryption and a zero-logs policy
• Reliable, fast connection speeds
• Apps for popular device platforms
• A network of servers providing access to geo-fenced content
• At least a 30-day money-back guarantee

How To Use a VPN To Stop ISP Monitoring and Tracking

If you’ve never used a VPN, you might believe they are complicated. However, nothing can be further from the truth. Many VPNs offer one-click access to a VPN server, protecting and enhancing your online activities in just a matter of seconds.

Here’s how to stop your ISP from monitoring your online travels:

1. Select a reliable VPN provider. I recommend NordVPN as my top pick, but Surfshark, ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, Private Internet Access, PrivateVPN, and PureVPN are also excellent, reasonably-priced alternatives.
2. Subscribe and create a username and a secure and unique password. Enable two-factor authentication is available.
3. Download and install the correct app for your device from the VPN provider’s website. Most providers offer clients for Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. Many providers also offer apps for other platforms, including Linux and Apple TV.
4. Launch the app, log in, and connect to a VPN server. If you’re simply looking to keep your online activities private, you can connect to a VPN server located in the country you’re in. If you want to unblock the library of a streaming service in another country, connect to a server in that country.
5. You can now surf the web as you normally would. However, your ISP won’t be able to track your online travels.

If you wish to always keep your ISP from seeing your internet travels and recording your internet history, set the VPN to connect whenever you start up your device. This will ensure that you’re always protected.

Why Does Anyone Want To See My Internet History?

If you’re not using a VPN, your Internet Service Provider (ISP) can monitor and log all of the websites you visit, keeping records of your online travels. But, why does your ISP want access to records of your online travels? There are several potential reasons an ISP may want to have a record of your internet history.

Advertising

Your internet history equals money, thanks to a little thing called targeted advertising. If an advertiser can gain access to your browsing habits, they can better target your interests, serving up advertisements according to your gender, interests, health issues, and more.

An ISP will log its customers’ online usage, sharing the information with advertisers who say the information allows them to provide more relevant ads. However, an ISP saving records of your internet history is also a violation of privacy, and it can even seem a little creepy when you see an ad related to something you did online.

Tracking seems especially creepy when it’s your children who are being tracked and targeted. By using a VPN, you can prevent advertising profiles from targeting you and your offspring.

Data Retention Laws

Some countries have mandatory data retention laws requiring ISPs to track and record their customers’ usage and other data. ISPs may record the websites you visit, messages and emails you send, what searches you make, your location, which device you’re using, and more. While the collected information can be gathered for various reasons, government agencies can claim that it’s collected to fight crime, terrorists, or my personal favorite, “it’s for the children.”

Censorship

While many countries do not put restrictions on what their citizens can or can’t access on the internet, there are overly restrictive countries (China comes to mind) that block citizens from accessing certain websites, services, and content. The countries will block content that speaks out against the country’s government, speaks ill of certain religions or groups, and gambling and porn sites.

In these restrictive countries, the government will require that the ISPs pay attention to which sites you attempt to visit, blocking access to the sites as mandated by the government.

Bandwidth Throttling

While this doesn’t occur as much as it did in the early days of broadband internet, there are ISPs that will throttle your internet connection’s bandwidth, depending on what activities you are engaging in, such as sharing files or streaming from “unapproved” streaming sites.

Comcast was caught a few years back throttling the bandwidth of users that used large amounts of data or those that visited certain websites.

Happily, a VPN ensures that your ISP can’t see your online activities, so it can’t throttle your connection simply based on what you’re doing online. However, it can still see how much data you’re using, so a VPN won’t help you avoid data usage caps.

How Can I Delete My Internet History From My ISP?

You cannot delete your internet history from your ISP’s servers. There is no way to access the ISP’s servers, that information is totally under the ISP’s control. Even if you delete your browser’s history from all of your mobile and desktop devices, your ISP will still have logs of your online usage.

Who Can View My Mobile Device’s Search History?

Your mobile online activities and searches are available to your mobile internet service provider. Your mobile ISP can track your online activities, how much data you use, what you search for, and can get a general idea of your location. Depending on the laws in your country, government agencies may have access to your mobile device’s internet history, your Google search history, and more. Advertisers will also likely have access to this information.

Can My ISP Detect That I’m Using a VPN?

A VPN encrypts your internet connection, which means all of your internet traffic is hidden by a tunnel of encryption. While this prevents your ISP (or anyone else) from seeing the contents of your internet traffic, your ISP can detect when you’re using a VPN.

However, this isn’t usually an issue, as VPNs are legal in most countries, and I haven’t heard of any ISPs blocking or otherwise punishing a customer for using a VPN in countries where it is legal.

However, in overly restrictive countries, like China, for example, they may have ways to detect and block VPN traffic. China’s “Great Firewall” is designed to do this. Luckily, some VPNs offer obfuscation features that hide a user’s VPN connection, allowing them to continue to access the unfiltered internet.

Can You Explain VPN Logging Policies?

While researching VPNs, you’ll see some information about the logging policies of each VPN. You’ll see references to two types of logs that could be kept, which are traffic logs and connections logs. Ideally, you do not want your VPN to keep either type of log.

What’s a Traffic Log?

Traffic logs record information about the sites you visit and the files you download. Ideally, you’ll want your VPN of choice to not keep any type of traffic logs. If a VPN keeps traffic logs you might as well not use a VPN, as someone will still have logs of where you’ve gone and what you’ve done online. Plus, VPNs that do keep traffic logs (usually free VPN providers) likely sell that information to advertisers and other nosy parties, as they can make extra income that way.

What’s a Connection Log?

Connection logs are only a concern if the VPN provider records your real IP address along with the VPN-provided IP address. If they do that, that information could be used to trace your online activities back to you.

Is a VPN My Only Option to Prevent Anyone From Seeing My Internet History?

If you don’t want to use a VPN, there are other ways to make it tougher for anyone to see your internet history. You’ll find that these methods have varying degrees of success.

Tor Browser

The Tor Browser encrypts your internet traffic and routes it through random nodes to prevent your ISP from seeing which websites you visit and preventing your internet activities from being traced back to you.

However, Tor Browser only hides your browser activity, all of the other internet-related traffic on your devices, like sharing files or streaming video via an app, are not hidden. Your ISP will also be able to detect that you’re using Tor, which can cause them to watch your online activities even closer. Plus, Tor Browser significantly slows down your browsing activity, due to how it routes your internet connection through multiple nodes.

HTTPS Proxies

HTTPS proxies provide another alternative to a VPN. However, keep in mind that if you use an HTTPS proxy your ISP can still see your IP address, as well as which websites you visit, although not the content you access. Also, HTTPS proxies only hide your browser traffic, it does nothing to keep the rest of the internet-related traffic coming to and leaving your device.

Which Countries Use ISPs to Censor Content?

China is not the only country that puts heavy restrictions on internet usage. There are other countries that censor internet content, forcing ISPs to track their users’ online travels and setting up roadblocks to certain types of content.

Algeria requires ISPs to monitor their users’ online activity and Algerians potentially face criminal charges if they post certain types of online content.

Bulgaria requests ISPs to provide live access to records of the internet traffic of their users.

Meanwhile, in Qatar, ISPs are required to block access to specific sites, especially those that publish adult content.

Is My Internet Search History Being Saved?

If you use an internet search engine like Google and Microsoft Bing, I guarantee you that your search engine is saving your search info. Google and Microsoft both track your search history because they want to show your targeted ads while you browse. That’s why if you search for information about the iPad, you’ll see more ads for the iPad and its accessories when you surf the web.

You can use a private search engine, such as DuckDuckGo, which doesn’t track or record your search result information, nor does it sell that information to advertisers.

Is There a Truly Private Internet Browser?

While a truly private internet browser may be thought of as an impossible dream, there are several internet browsers that provide better protection for your internet history than Google and Bing, which do their best to follow you around the web.

Remember though, you should also use a VPN along with these browsers, as your ISP can still see which websites you visit.

DuckDuckGo

I have long recommended using well-known private search engine DuckDuckGo for your internet searches. While DuckDuckGo uses Google search results, it does not share those searches with the search engine giant. DuckDuckGo also offers a private browser that is based on the same Chromium engine as Google Chrome but does not track your web browsing activity.

DuckDuckGo’s browser blocks web trackers, and has a built-in Duck Player for YouTube videos without those pesky ads.

Brave Privacy Browser

Brave is another privacy-first browser, but this one has a little twist that should prove attractive to many users. While Brave offers privacy protections and blocks ads, it is also based on Chromium. It also offers the ability to select what kind of ads you would like to see, while also offering “Basic Attention Token” awards, which can either be used for name-brand gift cards or can be given to content creators to reward their efforts.

Why Can’t I Use a Free VPN to Hide My Internet Usage?

Using a free VPN to hide your internet activities can best be termed jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. Most free VPN providers are not worth the effort it takes to install the freebie VPN apps (if they even offer an app for your device).

Free VPNs are well-known for tracking their users’ online activities. They then sell the valuable usage information to advertisers or anyone else willing to pay for it. Plus, some free VPN providers will insert unwanted ads and tracking cookies into your browser sessions.

In addition to being a privacy risk, free VPNs are also known to throttle their users’ bandwidth while also restricting their usage with monthly or data caps. These caps are usually quite low, meaning it won’t be long before you’re left unprotected again.

Plus, you may not be able to connect to the free VPN’s servers when you want to. Free VPNs usually have tiny networks, meaning there could be a wait before you’re given the okay to connect, and there might only be a few VPN servers to select from.

In Closing

As we’ve seen, there are several groups of folks who would love to get their hands on your internet history. Data is money and it’s no exception when it comes to your internet history. By using a VPN and taking a few other steps, you can protect your online usage privacy, foiling the best efforts of your ISP, advertisers, government types, and hackers.

Internet History FAQs