i’m connected via wireguard to my purple at home, how does my cable company know i’m using a vpn? can i get around this somehow? (iphone using spectrum cable app)
I don’t see what the complaint is, if you’re trying to use the ISP provided app, and it’s telling you to stop using a VPN, as it’s likely coded in a way to expect traffic on certain ports that it’s no longer receiving.
VPN traffic is on it’s own separate port(s) that the ISP can detect. There shouldn’t be much that the ISP can do to this traffic, other than throttle, or block it. So you should still have internet access; unless they’ve blocked the ports.
Put it this way. Regular web traffic uses port TCP 80 or 443. Wireguard VPNs use UDP port 51820 to establish a VPN. So if your web traffic is inside a VPN, they will see the VPN port number first. Thats why they know you’re using a VPN.
I hate Spectrum’s terms of usage where they give you only select channels off of your home network. That makes no sense. Get YouTube TV and you won’t have to deal with this mess.
Put in a route to send the traffic for this app outside the VPN!
The app itself on the device has access to your phone and they can see you have a VPN client running. 
You could try looking at the individual DNS requests the app makes and one by one selectively route them through the VPN to see if that solves the issue.
I do this for my IPTV service with Bell. They won’t allow me to stream certain channels “away” from home. There is one server that checks if I’m on my home IP address that I route through my VPN and the actual traffic goes direct once it’s authenticated.
Works perfectly.
Your app, not sure what kind of app it is, but for example, a video streaming app detects if you are using VPN by checking your IP.
Looks like you’re using the Spectrum Streaming app.
If your connection to the streaming service server originates from an IP on their blocklist, the app might think you’re on a VPN service.
VPN services share the same “exit” IPs for regular VPN subscribers, and many of these IPs are blocked by streaming services.
Some VPN services offer “Static” IP, which you rent an IP from them, so your “exit” IP seen by the streaming service will think you’re not connecting from one of those shared VPN IPs.
What are you trying to do? Watch TV on phone from remote connection? In that case the phone has the VPN tunnel running which can be detected even though the IP will be your home. What might work, is if you VPN in, then use another device on the network to run the app.
So for example, VPN from a computer (or phone) to the Purple, then RDP to a computer on the network, then use the app from there. The VPN isn’t running on the device connected to the Cable company so it should be undetectable. I used to do this years ago and it would work, but no guarantee.
In addition to what others have said, if you are using an app on your phone, make sure to disable Location before starting it.
Spectrum only knows because your service address is known to them, and the “general vicinity” of your originating IP Address is also known to them. It’s not 100% accurate, but it’s close enough for them to start relying on. My guess is your VPN terminates somewhere far from your service address, and that is how they know.
The way I get around this is 1. Use a central VPN on your router, 2. Put all devices that need to be vpn’d in their own subnet and setup some routing rules (mangle) that detect the spectrum traffic and route it without the vpn. I’ve successfully used Wireguard to watch tv on my home internet while traveling, and it’s worked pretty well.
For mine, I use a Mikrotik router, but most decent routers will have this capability.
it’s not my isp, just cable provider. i have a different isp. i was surprised the cable company could see i was using a vpn.
u/07030x you could try using a non-standard port, too. I do this with my OpenVPN configs
Lots of bots scan standard VPN ports looking for exploits/holes which can also flood your VPN server.
Please explain more on how to do this? I’m trying to figure this out. Same issue trying to watch spectrum TV away from home. Wire guard connection home doesn’t do it.
my vpn is using my home based router (firewalla purple), i am not using a commercial vpn service. spectrum is not my internet provider, i only subscribe to their cable tv.
Something’s not connecting for me… As the ISP would be a cable company more than likely. As it’s not clear who or if the ISP, or cable company, or whomever is providing internet access at the end points are.
But yes, an ISP can and will be able to see that you’re using a VPN service, without any issue. Although they cannot see what the traffic is. There shouldn’t be any expectation that anyone cannot determine the type of internet traffic/protocol is being used on an exterior traffic layer/wrapper.
No clue re: Spectrum TV, sorry. For Bell TV, it was a matter of watching flows and figuring out which one did the location authentication check, then I created a route using that domain via my (originally) OpenVPN server (on my Synology NAS) and now Wireguard VPN server (bought another Firewalla for my other home).
No clue if your Spectrum app is doing a location lookup or what their mechanism is for location verification. Sorry.
Right, but they do know where your ip is originating from and can tell it’s not at the service address. That’s how they know you’re on vpn.
isp is a local fiber provided, the cable is a national mega provider (spectrum). i guess i just assumed if blocking vpn was so easy netflix would have done it long ago rather than specifically blocking ip addresses known to be vpn services (nord etc).
i’m sorry i’m making this confusing in any way, i has just assumed this would be mostly invisible to the services i was using.
but even at my own house on my own wi-fi the moment i turn on the vpn it knows while my ip address should remain the same. it seems like their app is monitoring other apps on my phone.