Hope this is the right place for this.
I moved to college. My internet use is monitored (not sure to what extent, but they can see who does what because we have to log in to Ethernet using a PPP key something or other), and I’m pretty sure they only get alerted if someone does something illegal, but it still makes me very uncomfortable for them to know if I do certain non illegal activities ahemporn.
I’ve read that people use vpns to evade bans and blocks from websites, but does it also hide activity from the internet provider? Or can they just see that I have used a vpn?
A VPN creates an encrypted tunnel between you and the VPN server. So all you’re traffic goes through this tunnel before otherwise being exposed to the Internet abroad. Your ISP can only see that you are using a VPN and the IP of it’s server. All information such as what types of porn you are into can only be seen by your VPN provider it is hidden from your ISP as all that sort of information is wrapped in the encrypted tunnel that it’s not possible for your ISP to pry into.
And by the pattern of data transfer, they can guess what you’re doing.
Constant download at a given rate with little upload might imply streaming video, while bursts of download with a matching upstream trickle could be web browsing. And so on.
OpenWeb is simple and fast protocol, suitable for web surfing and streaming videos websites (such as YouTube, Vimeo, Vevo, and many others). Works with all major browsers (such as Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari), and works with Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux operating systems. This protocol usually offers faster surfing speeds than other protocols, and has much more features. OpenWeb encrypts your data both ways using proprietary encryption algorithms such as BlowFish and AES. If you are familiar with proxies, OpenWeb protocol works in similar way. The advantage of OpenWeb protocol is that there is no connection or disconnection from and to VPN servers, you simply switch to any server instantly and surf immediately, it’s that fast. Another great advantage of OpenWeb protocol is that, it has lots of useful features, such us browser selection, site filter, ads blocker, and media recorder.
OpenVPN
OpenVPN protocol is most secure and fast, suitable for tunnelling all applications on your computer, and also works with P2P applications (BitTorrent, such as uTorrent, BitComet and many others clients). OpenVPN protocol works on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and Routers with DD-WRT and Tomato firmware, and can also work on iPhone/iPad and Android devices (but requires jailbreaking your iOS and Android devices). OpenVPN protocol uses industry standard SSL encryption (AEC and BlowFish). The main advantage of OpenVPN protocol is that it has advanced split routing/split tunnelling features and can tunnel all applications on your computer. Also it has lots of other useful features, such as site filter, applicaion filter, port forwarding, web cache, and easy router setup wizard.
But that’s not VPN… is probably not even a real protocol, just something astrill.com made up. Even if it was a real protocol, there’s no documentation and it uses proprietary encryption. Recipe for disaster.