Basically what the title says - Can my ISP see the exit node of my VPN ? I hope not, because that would be weird, and would defeat the whole purpose of a VPN.
A bit of backstory about why I had this question ( it is slightly long, so is totally okay for the reader to skip this part )
My partner subscribed to a McAfee security suite, that we share (because they had some promotions available or something for multiple devices). It’s not the worst thing around - the antivirus part, but it also came with their “McAfee Safe Connect VPN” service, which is infamous for having a super-invasive data logging policy. So I said fuck’em and set out for a better option.
I am more or less tech-literate, but I researched somewhat deeply this time, basically to choose between “Privacy” (like Bruce Wayne - everybody knows who he is and lives in the Wayne Manor, but nobody knows what he does there, or that he has a BatCave underground), and “Anonymity” (Like Batman - everybody knows what he does - kicks ass of bad guys - but nobody really knows who he is, ok except for may be a couple of people) - basically trying to figure out if I needed a VPN at all or not.
I already have DNS-over-HTTPS enabled in all my devices - so that kinda took care of my “privacy” concerns (i.e. a nosy ISP) - although I believe my ISP can see which IP/Domain I am finally connecting to, which kinda sucks.
Apart from my ISP, the other concern was Public Wi-fi. I do work with my device(s) on-the-go a lot, which is why I have reason to ensure safety while connected to Public Wi-fi at Cafes/Restaurants/Airports. The fact that Internet is not just HTTPS - there’s telnet/FTP/SMTP/IMAP/POP3/Gopher and other protocols which have their own encryption methods (or not) also led me to the realization that DOH is not a total replacement for VPN. And the ISP can know my destination Domain even if DOH stops them from sniffing or blocking the DNS lookup itself.
In the end, I decided to go with VPN. Not any free ones (because as we all know they suck), and neither any over-promoted ones as well, like Nord or IPVanish (because they suck as well, in a different way). I chose Mullvad, but white labeled as Mozilla VPN. This is because I do use email-forwarding services to a large extent, and Mozilla is providing this combined deal of their email masking service Firefox Relay along with phone masking and VPN for 5 devices, all for a reasonable subscription (I won’t say how much because this post is not a promotion for them) - and being a long-time Firefox user (and also being anti-Google for a while), I decided to go with that (and so far all I heard about Mullvad are good things).
So far I am alright with it. Let’s see how it goes.
And that concludes my VPN journey story. While I was researching about how much my ISP can see when I connect to a VPN - I found that they can see encrypted traffic to and from my real IP, and that I connected to a “VPN server”, and nothing else.
I assume this “VPN Server” that they can see is the “entry node”, and not the “exit node” (i.e. my IP as seen by the world) - but never got a clear answer to that - which led me to my original question above.
And thanks for reading this far ! Feel free to share insights.
Using Mullvad is probably good enough.
One other thing your ISP can see, even with HTTPS traffic, is the domain name you’re connecting to. That’s part of the handshake of HTTPS, which is mitigated by encrypted hello but that’s just barely starting to get rolled out.
The only issue with a single point VPN, which most of them are, is if somebody is monitoring all the traffic of that VPN provider, they could do data stream analysis to determine which client has which stream. So if you’re watching a YouTube video through the VPN, and observer of the VPN could go I see a YouTube video going to the VPN provider at this bit rate, I see this new bitrate immediately correlated with this encrypted VPN user, therefore this encrypted VPN user is watching this video. Basically an observation and timing attack.
Even if you use multi-hop, somebody who can observe the entire network, like state actors, could perform the same attack and determine which data stream is going to which VPN user.
The good news is, other than state actors, no individual organization has the The entire Network observed that thoroughly. Your local ISP is not going to have that data.
This observation deanimonization attack can also be mitigated by not moving large data streams through the VPN, and using VPNs that are popular with many different users, hiding your traffic in the overall hustle and bustle of the VPN
Even state actor won’t really bother pursuing pirates if you make it harder like using a VPN