Internet

How to know if you are browsing through VPN or not

All the ways to know if you have a VPN

To know if we are browsing through a VPN, we must essentially look at two things. The first is to look at the public IP address that we have, and compare it with the one that the WAN interface of our router has, if it is the same then we are not browsing via VPN, if it is different then it is (or we are in CG -NAT with the operator). The second way is to check if we have any VPN-enabled Android programs or apps.

Look at the public IP

The IP adress we can define it as a logical and unique identifier for each of the computers connected to a network. Nowadays most of the networks are IPv4, but since we need more and more IP, we will be migrating to IPv6 networks. In case you don’t know public IP it would be the identifier of our network facing the Internet. A very important difference with respect to private IPs is that it will be assigned by our Internet provider or ISP.

In this case, what you have to do is find out the public IP because it says a lot about us and also allows us to know if you are browsing through VPN. For this, we can use the website of what is my ip net which you can access from this link. For example, this would be my public IP without using a VPN.

To know if you browse through VPN we have to look at two factors:

  1. Internet provider: here you would see how the name of your ISP looks like Telefónica, Jazztel, Orange etc.
  2. Country: if you see that another one different from yours appears, without a doubt we would be using a VPN or a Proxy.

Here is an example using Cloudflare’s free WARP VPN for PC:

As you can see, it is not our ISP and although it says Spain, that is because this VPN only allows you to use it in your country of origin. On the other hand, this would be an example using the VPN of paid surfshark:

Here to know if you browse through VPN we look at the two sections mentioned above. As you can see, it is not a usual Internet provider name and it also locates us in Portugal. Therefore, thanks to the public IP we can easily find out if we are using a VPN or not.

Find out if you use VPN on Windows

One of them is to look at the notification icons that appear on the Windows taskbar. Normally the VPN programs have an icon there so that we can know the status or access its options. This is an example of a working VPN:

You can also know if you browse through VPN or at least if you have one configured on your computer, if in Windows 10, you are going to Start Menu, Setting vpn. Then you will see if you have any VPN available on your computer.

In this case, it can be seen that we have a Surfshark VPN and if we click on it, it will give us more options.

If we click on Connect and the connection is established successfully you know you are using a VPN. Also another way to know if we have a VPN connection on our computer is to go to Start Menu, Control Panel, Network and Internet Y Network connections.

Here we can see the status of the connections and if they are enabled or disconnected. You can also find out if you browse through a VPN, although it must be recognized that it is more complex to find out. As in the previous case, the VPN that I mentioned before appears.

Know it on Android systems

One of them is to find out the public IP through a browser that also works for any computer with Windows, Linux or IOS. On Android, when using a VPN we can do it in two different ways:

  1. Creating a manual VPN connection.
  2. Using an app.

If in doubt, the easiest way would be to use an app like Cloudflare’s WARP for Android:

1.1.1.1: Faster & Safer Internet
1.1.1.1: Faster & Safer Internet

For example, if we are going to Settings, connect and share, vpnand we will see a screen like this:

Here you can see that we already have a VPN installed in this case WARP from Cloudflare. Also if we click on the symbol + We will access the options and we could add a VPN, in this case manually.

On the other hand, if we click on the 1.1.1.1 icon we can know if you browse through VPN:

If the box «Stay connected to the VPN“, then we can be sure that we are using it. Also just below we have the option Block all connections that do not use the VPN if we want all our traffic to go through it.

Finally, one way to know if you are browsing through a VPN is to display the Android notification curtain:

At the top, next to the Bluetooth icon, the VPN icon appears. Also the Android operating system in a notification tells us that the VPN is activated. Then the last red arrow shows us that our Internet connection is private thanks to Cloudflare’s WARP app. To finish, if we want to disconnect the VPN, we will click on any of these two notifications.

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *