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.
Your ISP can tell which machine you’re connecting to, so unless you configure multi hop, yes. It still helps, in two ways: first, other people may be using your exit node, and even if your ISP can monitor the outbound exit node traffic, they can’t know which is yours. Second, and more importantly, the packet-level tracking data that your ISP puts on your traffic is rendered useless, because it’s lost at the exit node. That alone gives you more privacy than any other action. You can DNS over HTTPS all you want, but that packet tracking tells the ISP exactly where you went.