OpenVPN Support Forum

I am a newbie to VPN and OpenVPN technology.

I have a question.

When I signed up with the commercial OpenVPN service provider, I was provided *.crt, *.key and ta.key.

Will the commercial OpenVPN service provider be able to decrypt my traffic data that I send to or receive from websites?

Yes.
Unless you also have encryption between yourself and the website (such as SSL).
OpenVPN secures the connection between the openvpn client and the openvpn server. Between the server and the website, everything is as it would be if openvpn was not involved.
You can sniff the tun interface to see whats happening inside the vpn tunnel (unencrypted)... Your provider could do this as well.

krzee wrote:You can sniff the tun interface to see whats happening inside the vpn tunnel (unencrypted)... Your provider could do this as well.

Thanks for your clarification, krzee.

Other than myself and my commercial OpenVPN service provider, no other individual can sniff my traffic?

as soon as the decrypted traffic leaves your provider then somebody can sniff it ; the only thing a VPN does , is secure the traffic between two endpoints. In most cases those two endpoints are your PC (the client) and the VPN provider. From a device to your PC people can sniff traffic, and from the VPN provider to anywhere else somebody can (in theory) sniff traffic.