How do you get over the “connected to the Internet” thing?
If you are connected, they can sniff your traffic no matter what you do. It is physically impossible to be connected and disconnected at the same tie.
All your ISP can see is that you have an encrypted connection to your VPN provider. They can’t see anything beyond that.
Otherwise they have a record of every web site you have been to.
They can’t see encrypted sites such as online banking.
But any open site such as Free Republic they can see everything you can.
The big Data slurpers:
1. Your ISP.
2. Your Email provider.
3. The OS. Think Windows 10.