You mean DNS lookups? I believe there is a way around that with TOR. Many people don’t use their ISP’s DNS anyway. You could build your own DNS caching server if you wanted to.
Beyond that. Your ISP and it’s peering partners routers know your packet’s next hop so it can route it. Also, the NSA is believed the collect every packet that peers with ATT as it’s rumored they have equipment in their data centers.
most of the TOR network nodes are operated by the US. gov ... Big Obozo keeps watching you ...
TAILS is a bootable live distribution that is built around Tor, and also provides additional pre-configured SSL enabled services and blocks all services a site might attempt to open outside the defined ones. It also leaves no trace behind once it is turned off although it is possible to create a persistent volume.
All the provider can know is that your IP address is accessing a Tor IP. You can use VirtualBox or something similar to create a virtual host on your own system and try it, and even use it in that way for everyday use. I sometimes use it to access Google search.
alternative DNS providers:
http://www.opennicproject.org/
https://www.opendns.com/
useful page to bookmark:
https://prism-break.org/