My dad is a senior director in the IT department at my city’s hospital so he knows his way around technology and software. I’m a writer so I tend to search up interesting topics and questions and I don’t exactly want him seeing what I look up. Would a VPN prevent him from seeing my browser and search history?
And what about those other search apps that are meant to be private and have passcodes on them (like Kode and such)? Would I still need a VPN for them or would a VPN also block it the same as if I were to use just google or safari? If anything’s confusing, please let me know and I’ll clarify it!
If your dad is inspecting network traffic all he would be able to see is that you’re connected to a VPN but if he sees that he’s probably gonna want you to answer some questions about that.
A VPN will encrypt your traffic. However, you need to make sure that your DNS queries go through the VPN as well, otherwise a sophisticated IT person could intercept them and see who you’re connecting to, though not the search queries, but sites visited, etc.
Also, make sure you’re browsing in incognito/private mode so that your browser isn’t saving history, caching pages/images, etc.
Using Tor would also accomplish encryption and private browsing and is free.
The best thing I could think of that you could do would be to run a VPN and use a browser such as Firefox Focus, which deletes everything when you close the browser. I don’t know much about Kode and the other search apps as I only use browsers, no widgets or apps that are untrustworthy.
There are other ways of being very safe but it’s a bit excessive such as running tails on a laptop and have it removed everything after you shit it down. But for the purpose you’re looking for, I think a VPN, a private browser such as Firefox Focus would be enough. To look much further would be a bit excessive.
It depends on how they monitor the network. If they are just checking logs on the router then as long as you’re searching with https they can’t see what the search terms are, they can only see the connection going to the search engine, not what the search term actually is.
VPN is overkill for this. IF for some reason you don’t want them seeing that you are searching just use TOR Broswer. It’s free!
Now if they have a keylogger or root kit on your phone/laptop then you’re boned until you can remove it.
Thank you! This helps a lot — if he does then I’ll tell him, but I’d rather not straight up tell him I’m searching up on how to hide a body for a murder mystery story lol
Forgot to add, if all you are doing is web browsing rather than streaming media or downloading torrents then you could use the TOR browser; it has the added benefit of being free, Use DuckDuckGo for search to avoid search engine tracking.
This is a dumbass argument. The guys dad runs an IT dept. you aren’t gonna pull a fast one on him. If the dude just wants to “research” things like “how to get rid of a body” “for his writing” then running tor off a thumb drive is the way to go. But in reality he prolly just wants to look at some weird porn or shitpost on 4chan all day and not have daddy see, so yes a vpn would be better.
Fair enough. In this case the best thing to do is to hop on mobile data. If that is monitored we can safely assume that you aren’t getting by without an excuse.