Kdtyjb

If I delete my router's history, is it still visible and can my ISP still provide it to my parents? Or is it deleted from existence?

Your ISP's record of your network usage isn't in any way affected by you doing anything to your router. You could wipe its memory, subject it to an EMP, and crush its chips to dust, and it wouldn't have any effect on them. :-) They maintain their own logs, which you cannot delete.

Whether your ISP will provide that information to your parents is another question, I expect it varies by locale/jurisdiction and possibly ISP.

You can make it (nearly) impossible for your ISP to know what sites you're visiting by using Tor or similar. The project includes Tor Browser, based on Firefox ESR, which makes it really easy to browse over Tor. You can also use the Brave browser (no affiliation), based on the Chromium project, in its "Private window with Tor" mode. This is not user-configuring a browser for Tor (which the Tor project advises against, it's too easy to miss out important things), it's a browser from privacy-obsessed people with a Tor-enabled private browsing mode. Both Tor Browser and Brave have trade-offs, see this tweet thread (in particular the replies from Tom Lowenthal, their Security & Privacy PM). Some people say "You should never browse with Tor with anything but Tor Browser" but it's more nuanced than that.

Routers usually do not store history and ISPs, while they may record such things on internal logs, do not give them out to anyone without a court order. You do not need to worry about your parents finding the naughty sites you visited unless it's in your browser history. Just turn on incognito mode and don't worry.

While it is theoretically possible that some ISPs may have a child-safe mode where they record and even report visited sites to the account holders, I have never heard of this happening. It would also be fraught with legal risks, so it is unlikely to be a realistic threat. If you are worried about that threat, you can use a VPN or Tor to encrypt the connection going through your ISP so they cannot log anything.

ISPs can absolutely log traffic upstream from your router.

The easiest way for an ISP to inspect what users are doing is by inspecting logged dns queries. People can get around this by using non ISP dns servers such as 1.1.1.1 (cloudflare dns) or 8.8.8.8 (google dns)

The next easiest is to actually log connections. To get around this, people use VPN or an onion router such as Tor. This causes the traffic to all go out over a single encrypted tunnel (or in the case of tor many encrypted tunnels) till it leaves the network owned by the snoopers. The Opera browser now includes free ephemeral VPN. If you wanted to build your own openvpn server in the cloud there are some setup scripts on github. If you live under a repressive government they will try to block or disrupt VPN traffic (note to representatives of repressive governments, privacy is necessary for information security and basic human dignity). In that case you may wish to explore shadowsocks.

Do be aware that most free VPN services fund their operation by monetizing your traffic data. This means they actively collect and actively sell your connection data. This might be preferable to being watched by people who know you, but do keep it in mind.

Opera VPN + cloudflare DNS should provide privacy ISP from account owners. Do be aware of local cached data (incognito mode is your friend here). Tor works too. Keep in mind that Tor traffic has a distinctive fingerprint. Network administrators who are interested in who might be doing illegal things can watch for that traffic. There was a report recently of a college student who sent a threatening email in order to delay an exam. The network administrators simply checked network logs for who on campus was using Tor during the minute the email was received and then said student received a knock, some new chrome bracelets and didn't have to worry about exams anymore.

Your parents will not normally have the authority to retrieve data from the ISP.

An ISP does not offer this type of information on request. You need some type of government warrant before they're released, and the process is non-trivial.

If you're worried about pr0n and simply silly stuff, then don't worry about it.

If you're Dread Pirate Roberts v2.0, and am asking on Stack Exchange for answers... this is a VERY ironic turn of events... since v1.0 was busted via Stack Exchange!

When you erase the router history, you are hiding which device connected to your router stablished the communication.

The ISP still knows and stores the traffic that outcomes from your router to internet.

To hide traffic to your parents, any secured VPN should be enough:
Your ISP will know your are connected to a VPN but not the real traffic. On the other hand, the VPN provider will know the traffic, but in most cases not the origin

So, your parents will need both pieces (ISP & VPN provider) to solve the puzzle. In this way, unless they are federal I think your privacy should be safe.

If you want to play next level, as suggested in previous answers use Tor.

Any website you browsed will be saved in ISP software (ex: MikroTik) which shows IP address, time and browsed url. If you have multiple devices running on same internet connection, even then information is going to be saved in ISP logs.

Only way to hide websites you are using is by securing.

1. VPN: When something is browsed using any browser, first it goes through your internet connection to website which you are looking for but using VPN, first it goes from your internet connection to VPN IP address, then the website you are browsing. At this time your ISP will not be able to log whatever you are browsing, neither google nor any search engine will be able to log your data as they see VPN's IP address than yours.


2. Firefox Private Browsing or Chrome Incognito prevent history and browsing data from being saved on the computer you’re using, but if there is in fact a piece of network hardware monitoring connections, using these browser features will not help.


3. Browsec: Its a plugin/extension in firefox & chrome which works as VPN. You can use this if you want only your browser data to be hidden or secured.

In answer to the OP's actual questions.

Yes, it is still visible and not deleted from existence.

So anything you have looked at will be available for your ISP to deliver to the account holder or law enforcement/government agencies etc.

Now if you want to stop the data being so easy to gather, (not impossible but shall we say financially restrictive) look at the other answers which show you some good ways of providing deniability, note I do not say you could hide you were up to something. If your parents say you've been using Tor or a VPN you can always say it was to look at TV shows that were restricted in your country rather then searching for well whatever triggered your original question.

Also don't use incognito mode it hides nothing from your ISP it only stops the local browser from storing your browser history.

Regular consumer routers save basic identifiers of devices that have been connected to it. Some routers, especially many of the newer ones, do allow basic logging of hostnames or sites visited based on DNS lookups, but usually not full URLs. Some can be configured to send periodic emails of the log. Depending on the router, it may be possible to unplug it to clear the log. If you know how big your router's log is, and you know that email is turned off, you could try to get rid of the old log data by visiting lots of random websites. ISPs generally do not keep logs, at least not logs that they share. Their main concern is with spam being generated from infected customer hosts within their network.

The NSA does log everything that they can, and this might be used against you in the future.

If you do know that logs were kept, then you better act fast and invite some friends over so that they can be blamed for the naughty sites, and set up a temporary Tor exit node or other public proxy on your computer so that you can blame it on that. This is only if the situation is serious.