Online privacy
What actually identifies you online
Six signals follow you around the web. A VPN handles three of them properly, one partly, and two not at all. Most VPN pages only mention the first three.
Signal by signal
The honest version. A tool that claims to fix everything is a tool you cannot check.
| Signal | What it reveals | With a VPN |
|---|---|---|
| IP address | Your city, your provider, and a stable handle sites can log against you. | Fixed |
| DNS queries | Every domain you open, readable by whoever runs the resolver — usually your provider. | Fixed |
| Traffic on the network | On open Wi-Fi, anything unencrypted between you and the site. | Fixed |
| Cookies | That you are the same visitor as yesterday, across sessions and often across sites. | Unchanged |
| Browser fingerprint | Fonts, canvas, screen and timezone combine into an identifier that needs no cookie. | Partly |
| Being signed in | Everything. A signed-in account tells the site who you are, whatever the IP says. | Unchanged |
That last row is why we do not say a VPN makes you anonymous. It changes where your traffic appears to come from. It does not change that you signed in.
What covers the other rows
Cookies, trackers and the address you hand over on signup are separate problems, and they need separate tools. These are ours.
SandBlockBlocks trackers before the request is sent, and strips tracking parameters from links. Covers the cookie and beacon row.
Sand IDA disposable address per signup, so a site never gets the inbox you actually read.SandAgentChanges what your browser reports about itself, which is the fingerprint row.
SandPassA distinct password per account, so one leak stays one account.Frequently asked questions
Does a VPN make me anonymous?
No, and anyone saying otherwise is selling something. It changes the address your traffic arrives from, which is real and useful. It does not sign you out of your accounts, clear your cookies or alter your browser fingerprint. Anonymity is the sum of all of those, and no single tool delivers it.
What can my internet provider still see?
That you are connected to a VPN, how much data you move and when. Not which sites you open — that travels inside the tunnel, and the DNS queries go with it. Before the tunnel, your provider saw every domain you visited.
What happens if authorities ask for my data?
Any provider operating legally answers lawful requests with whatever it holds. That is why what a provider stores matters more than what it promises. Ours is set out in the privacy policy, in plain terms — that is the document to read, not a slogan on a homepage.
Is the free plan less private than Premium?
No. The encryption, the DNS handling and what we store are identical. Premium adds countries and speed, not a different privacy standard. Selling privacy as a tier would mean making the free one deliberately worse, which is not a business we want.
Is a VPN enough on its own?
For the network layer, yes. For the rest, no — the table above is the whole argument. Pair it with a blocker for trackers, a disposable address for signups, and distinct passwords. Those four cover most of what is realistically trackable about an ordinary person.
Start with the network layer.
Free, no account, no card. The rest of the toolkit is free too.
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