Can my phone carrier see my browsing history? By carrier

Short answer: yes, on mobile data your phone carrier can see every website and app your phone connects to, when, and how much data moves, including in incognito mode. It cannot see the specific pages, your searches or your messages on encrypted sites and apps. Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile each say how they use this for ads.

On mobile data, your carrier is your internet provider. Everything your phone sends leaves through its network, so it is in the same position as a home internet provider, with one extra: it knows which phone, and roughly where that phone is.

What your carrier can and cannot see

HTTPS, the padlock in your browser, encrypts the content of nearly every site and app. It does not hide where the connection goes.

Visible to your carrier: the name of each site or service your phone connects to (through DNS lookups and the TLS handshake), the server's IP address, the time, how long the connection lasted and how much data moved.

Hidden from your carrier on HTTPS: the full page address after the domain, what you type into a search box, the content of pages, your passwords, and messages inside encrypted apps.

So your carrier can see that your phone opened a health site at 1am. It cannot see which article you read there. Our guide to what your internet provider can see explains the three places the site name leaks and has a layer-by-layer table.

Can my carrier see what I search?

Not the words. Google and other search engines load over HTTPS, so your carrier sees a connection to the search engine and nothing about the query. It does see the sites you open from the results, and those often give the topic away.

Your search history is stored by the search engine in your account, not by your carrier.

Can my carrier see my incognito or private browsing?

Yes, the same as normal browsing. Private mode only stops your browser from saving history on your phone. Your connections still cross the carrier's network. Google's Chrome help page lists "your internet service provider" among those who "may be able to observe your activity in Incognito" (Chrome Help). Deleting your history does not reach the carrier either, because its records are made on its side of the network. More in our guide to what incognito mode actually hides.

What Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile say they do with it

Every carrier can see the traffic. What differs is what they say they use for marketing and ads. As of October 2026, from each carrier's own privacy pages:

Carrier and program	Uses your browsing?	Default	Where to change it
Verizon Custom Experience	Yes, the domains of websites you visit and the apps you use	On unless you opt out	My Verizon > privacy preferences, or the My Verizon app under Profile & Settings
Verizon Custom Experience Plus	Yes, plus location and call records	Off unless you opt in	Same place
AT&T Personalized	Data about your use of AT&T services and apps, not the browsing AT&T sees as your provider	On, you are enrolled automatically	att.com/PrivacyChoices
AT&T Personalized Plus	Yes, browsing AT&T collects as your internet provider	Off unless you opt in	att.com/PrivacyChoices
T-Mobile Relevant Ads	App names and time spent in them, from your T-Mobile connection	A toggle you can switch off	T-Mobile Privacy Dashboard
T-Mobile Tailored Offers and Ads	Yes, browsing activity, with location and more	Off unless you opt in	T-Mobile Privacy Dashboard

Verizon

Verizon's Custom Experience FAQ says the program "uses information about the websites you visit and the apps you use on your mobile device." It uses "only the first part of the web addresses (URLs) you visit," and nothing "past the first '/' or '?' in the URL." So Verizon's program looks at the domain, not the page.

Three more details from the same page. "You'll be part of the Custom Experience program unless you opt out." Verizon says it keeps "information about the websites you visit for no more than 6 months." And it says it filters out sensitive sites, "related to adult content, health conditions, sexual orientation and others." Neither program uses the content of your calls, emails or texts, though Custom Experience Plus does use call records such as numbers and times.

AT&T

AT&T's privacy notice, last updated October 15, 2026, splits its ad programs in two. "You are automatically enrolled in the Personalized program." The opt-in Personalized Plus program is the only one that "may use web browsing we collect as your internet provider for marketing and advertising and infer websites you visit over a secured connection." That last phrase is AT&T saying, in its own words, that it can work out which sites you visit even when the connection is encrypted.

T-Mobile

T-Mobile's Privacy Center describes three programs. Relevant Ads uses app data from your phone and "high-level app usage data from your T-Mobile broadband." T-Mobile's example: it processes "the name of an app you opened, like a recipe app, and how long you spent in that app," but not that "you looked at Italian and Thai recipes."

The older Personalized Ads and Offers program, which used browsing activity, "is no longer available to opt in to," though people who joined stay in until they opt out. Its replacement, Tailored Offers and Ads, needs a fresh opt-in and analyzes "app usage, purchase info, browsing activity, precise location, and CPNI," which may be shared "with other brands."

Kids are treated differently. T-Mobile says Kids' Lines for children under 18 are automatically excluded "from marketing, advertising, and non-essential data usage."

The broader history, including an FTC study of how the big providers combine browsing with other data and the FCC fines over location data, is in our internet provider guide.

Run this test on mobile data

You can see who answers your phone's DNS lookups, the first place a site name leaks, in about 30 seconds.

Turn off Wi-Fi so the phone is on mobile data.
Open one.one.one.one/help in your browser. It is Cloudflare's test page.
Look at the "AS Name" line. If it shows your carrier, your carrier is answering your lookups, which means it gets a list of the site names you visit as you go.

After you turn on encrypted DNS (below), the same page should show a different network and Yes next to DNS over HTTPS or DNS over TLS if you chose Cloudflare.

Does Wi-Fi change what my carrier sees?

Yes. On Wi-Fi, your browsing goes through that Wi-Fi's internet provider and router, not your carrier. Your carrier then sees only what still goes over its network: calls, regular SMS texts and, with Wi-Fi Calling on, an encrypted tunnel back to the carrier for calls and texts. Whoever runs the Wi-Fi takes the carrier's place for browsing; our guide to what the Wi-Fi owner can see covers that side.

How to keep your browsing from your carrier

Opt out of the ad programs. This does not stop the carrier from seeing traffic, but it changes what it says it uses for marketing. Use the paths in the table above.
Turn on encrypted DNS. On Android, open Settings > Network & internet > Private DNS. Google says that "by default, your device uses Private DNS with all networks that can use Private DNS," and you can name a provider yourself (Android Help). On iPhone, encrypted DNS comes from an app or a configuration profile. Google is clear about the limit: Private DNS "helps secure only DNS questions and answers."
Use a VPN for the site names too. A VPN wraps all your traffic, DNS included, in one encrypted tunnel, so your carrier sees one connection to a VPN server and how much data moves. The VPN operator is then the one in a position to see where you go, so pick one that is built not to keep that. Secria VPN keeps no activity logs: we do not record browsing, DNS queries or traffic contents. Servers run RAM-only, and every connection uses a post-quantum key exchange (ML-KEM-1024) on WireGuard. It is $7.99 a month, or included in Pro.

None of these hide you from the sites you visit or the accounts you are signed in to.

FAQ

Can Verizon see my browsing history? On Verizon mobile data, yes, at the level of which sites and apps you connect to. Its Custom Experience program uses the domains of the websites you visit unless you opt out, and Verizon says it keeps that website information for no more than 6 months.

Can T-Mobile see my search history? Not your search terms, which travel encrypted. T-Mobile sees the sites and apps your phone connects to on its network. Its Relevant Ads program uses app names and time spent in apps, and its opt-in Tailored Offers and Ads program uses browsing activity.

Can my carrier see my history if I delete it? Deleting history only clears your browser. Anything the carrier's systems recorded was made on its network, so nothing on your phone can remove it.

Can carrier employees look at my internet history? The carriers' privacy pages describe automated advertising programs, not staff reading individual histories. Records a carrier keeps can still be handed over in response to legal demands, which our internet provider guide covers.

Does my phone bill show the websites I visit? No. Bills show the plan, charges and data used. A list of websites only appears through a family safety service, such as Verizon Family, if one is turned on for a line.

Your carrier sees where your phone goes on mobile data, and it tells you in its own privacy pages what it does with that. Opt out where you can, and use encrypted DNS or a VPN when the site names themselves should stay private.