What Your ISP Sees
Your Internet Service Provider sees everything you do online. Every website, every search, every video. They keep logs and can sell this data or give it to governments. Here is what changes with a VPN or Tor.
ISP sees: You connected to a VPN server.
ISP sees: Every website you visit, when, for how long.
Without protection, your ISP has a complete list of every site you visited. With a VPN, they only see encrypted traffic going to one server.
ISP sees: You connected to the Tor network. Nothing else.
ISP sees: Your searches, videos watched, articles read.
Tor encrypts your traffic and bounces it through three random servers. Your ISP cannot see where it goes or what it contains.
ISP sees: You visited example.com (not which page).
ISP sees: The exact page, form data, everything.
HTTPS encrypts the content but not the destination. Your ISP still knows you visited a site, just not what you did there.
ISP sees: Encrypted traffic to VPN. Nothing more.
ISP logs every domain you look up before connecting.
DNS is like a phone book lookup. Without private DNS, your ISP sees every website name you request, even before you visit it.
The bottom line: Your ISP is watching by default. A VPN hides what you do. Tor hides even better. Both are essential for privacy.