When I run a Whois on the server I’m connected to, it shows the ISP as Total Server Solutions. Isn’t it supposed to show up as London Trust Media? Can Total Server Solutions see our data?
Total Server Solutions is one of PIA's datacenter providers. PIA in itself is not registered as an ISP so that's why it doesn't show up as "Private Internet Access" or "London Trust Media".
As to whether they can see your data, the answer is yes. Due to the way the Internet works, it's impossible that your traffic gets encrypted and hidden all the way to your destination unless said destination would also use PIA so your request could stay on PIA's network all along. Your traffic have to go out unencrypted somewhere.
PIA's role in this is to encrypt everything between your computer and our servers so that your traffic is mixed in with every other PIA user's traffic (making it hard to trace back to you) as well as making so your ISP cannot monitor anything of what you do, even if the NSA wanted to tap into your traffic.
So you’re saying that Total Server Solutions can identify a PIA user since they know where the traffic is coming from?
No, All VPN traffic is encrypted end anonymized behind a Shared IP address. Even if the datacenter were logging incoming and outgoing traffic, the information collected would be useless due to the System of shared IP addresses and encryption applied by the service.
@donv45, just to build on what @OpenVPN mentioned, your traffic coming in to Total Server Solutions is encrypted, so even to them it looks like gibberish.
It's decrypted and mixed with traffic from other users on our servers, but since we don't log, this process can't be used to identify you.
Your traffic leaves our servers unencrypted, but since it's mixed with traffic from thousands of other users, at that point it would be extremely difficult for TSS (or any other entity) to trace it back to anyone in particular.
Thank you for clearing this up. So from what I’m understanding, the more users on a gateway, the harder it is for the datacenter to pin traffic to anyone? Surely some servers will have less users than others.
Thank you for clearing this up. So from what I’m understanding, the more users on a gateway, the harder it is for the datacenter to pin traffic to anyone? Surely some servers will have less users than others.
Regardless of the amount of users on a particular gateway, the IP address provided by your ISP will be hidden behind a shared IP address that's assigned to you by the VPN service. No one will be able to trace Internet activity back to you.
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As to whether they can see your data, the answer is yes. Due to the way the Internet works, it's impossible that your traffic gets encrypted and hidden all the way to your destination unless said destination would also use PIA so your request could stay on PIA's network all along. Your traffic have to go out unencrypted somewhere.
PIA's role in this is to encrypt everything between your computer and our servers so that your traffic is mixed in with every other PIA user's traffic (making it hard to trace back to you) as well as making so your ISP cannot monitor anything of what you do, even if the NSA wanted to tap into your traffic.
I hope this makes it clearer for you!
It's decrypted and mixed with traffic from other users on our servers, but since we don't log, this process can't be used to identify you.
Your traffic leaves our servers unencrypted, but since it's mixed with traffic from thousands of other users, at that point it would be extremely difficult for TSS (or any other entity) to trace it back to anyone in particular.