Can you still be tracked while using a VPN?

A VPN is a powerful privacy tool, but it’s often oversold as total anonymity. The truth is more useful to know: a VPN closes one big tracking channel — your IP address and your network’s view of you — while leaving others open. Understanding the gaps is how you actually stay private.

What a VPN stops

With a VPN on, websites can’t use your real IP address to identify or locate you, and your ISP or network can’t see which sites you visit. That genuinely removes a major way you’re tracked around the web. It’s the reason a VPN is worth having. But it’s not the whole story.

How you can still be tracked

These work regardless of your IP address:

• Cookies. Sites store little tags in your browser that recognise you on return visits, VPN or not.
• Browser fingerprinting — identifying you from the unique combination of your browser, screen, fonts and settings. More in what is browser fingerprinting.
• Logging in. The moment you sign into an account, that service knows exactly who you are.
• The same account across sites — social logins and embedded trackers follow you between them.

Closing the gaps

Layer your defences. Keep the VPN for the IP and network side. Add tracker and ad blocking to cut cookies and embedded trackers — our apps include this. Use private browsing or clear cookies regularly, be mindful of staying logged in, and check what your browser gives away with our Privacy Check. No single tool makes you invisible, but together they make you genuinely hard to follow.