DNS Leak
When your browser or other program loads a link, image, file, or whatever, it needs to resolve the DNS address of it in order to load it. That DNS query, in the default state, is to your ISP, your Internet Service Provider. That's whomever you get your internet from, whether Comcast or AT&T or Time-Warner or whomever. Undobtedly they can and do log every DNS query you make, thereby allowing anyone to see what you were looking, where, and when. That's your entire browser and email history available to any yahoo with a warrant or not, even if you use the VPN for 100% of your traffic (hence the name "DNS Leak"). Congress was even going to mandate logging and tracking everything, recently. The workaround? Go into your adapters and your router advanced settings and point DNS to 3rd parties such as Google (8.8.8.8/8.8.4.4) or OpenDNS (208.67.222.222/208.67.222.220). Google doesn't save the log of your DNS queries for longer than 48 hours, thus it's harder to track you. And if they do get a warrant to see your activity, they try to tell you, perhaps except a FISA warrant you little terrorist you. OpenDNS is owned by Cisco, so...
When your browser or other program loads a link, image, file, or whatever, it needs to resolve the DNS address of it in order to load it. That DNS query, in the default state, is to your ISP, your Internet Service Provider. That's whomever you get your internet from, whether Comcast or AT&T or Time-Warner or whomever. Undobtedly they can and do log every DNS query you make, thereby allowing anyone to see what you were looking, where, and when. That's your entire browser and email history available to any yahoo with a warrant or not, even if you use the VPN for 100% of your traffic (hence the name "DNS Leak"). Congress was even going to mandate logging and tracking everything, recently. The workaround? Go into your adapters and your router advanced settings and point DNS to 3rd parties such as Google (8.8.8.8/8.8.4.4) or OpenDNS (208.67.222.222/208.67.222.220). Google doesn't save the log of your DNS queries for longer than 48 hours, thus it's harder to track you. And if they do get a warrant to see your activity, they try to tell you, perhaps except a FISA warrant you little terrorist you. OpenDNS is owned by Cisco, so...