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Host names are commonly unencrypted. See [0]. IP addresses also tell a lot. They can check what domain names map to that IP address.

[0]: https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/ssl/what-is-encrypted-sn...

They still likely get your DNS info, and also they know you are connected to x ip address which is likely y service.

All HTTPS does is make sure they can’t see what you are transferring. There is still meta data to whom.

Why do you think google runs 8.8.8.8? It’s not out of kindness.

Do I care that can see metadata? If they don’t know what was transferred, how is that useful to them? Data-mining?

IP addresses? DNS queries? Later if you either use ISP provided DNS servers or unencrypted DNS. You can identify host from queries and IPs and then match it to TLS connection.

By looking at the SNI [0] if the connection does not use TLS 1.3 and ESNI.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication

DNS for one, if you're using theirs.

Because the base URL isn't encrypted. The packet still needs to be able to be routed