Summary: Your ISP controls your internet connection and it's easy for them to monitor the data you send and receive. The question is, why would they bother?
Can employees at a local telephone ISP read my e-mails and monitor my web surfing and tell others about what they read/see?
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Yes they can.
The real question is would they? Probably not.
And if it's of real concern to you, what might you do? I do have some ideas.
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Your ISP knows a lot about you. They ultimately control your connection to the internet. And by control, I do mean total control.
They know where you live, so as to be able to physically get your connection to you. For example, as I've said over and over and over and over, in order to locate you by your IP address, it typically takes law enforcement and a court order. Where do they take that court order? To your ISP, to get them to reveal your physical location.
Your ISP also controls the equipment that all your internet data flows over once it leave your location. You connect to your ISP, and it's your ISP that then routes the data to where it's supposed to go elsewhere on the internet.
Can they "sneak a peek" at your data while they route it? Absolutely they can.
The question is: would they?
Folks, I've said this before too: we're just not that interesting. Why would anyone want to spend time looking at gigabytes of data just so they can spy on your surfing habits or email? Most ISPs are overworked enough as it is, without adding some kind of electronic voyeurism to their job.
In my strong opinion most people need do nothing to protect themselves from their ISP.
OK, so what if you still want to protect yourself? What if you have a legitimate reason for being paranoid?
Several possible solutions come to mind:
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Secure connections - any connection that begins with https instead of http is an encrypted connection. So while your ISP can see which sites you are visiting, the data actually sent to or displayed from the web site on an https connection is encrypted. Using an https connection to a service like GMail is one way to secure your email from snooping. Naturally you're still trusting the mail providers not to snoop on you.
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Anonymous Web Surfing - using services like Anonymizer, Tor or other services like them your ISP can tell that you're using the service but they cannot tell where you're surfing; it's all encrypted. It'll be slower, but it'll be encrypted. And of course you're trusting the service not to snoop on you.
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Encrypted Email - there are several ways to send encrypted email. Your ISP will be able to see who you're emailing, but your message will be encrypted and hidden. Encrypted email is not easy for most people to set up, but it can be done.
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VPN Services - There are services available that will allow you to set up a VPN or "Virtual Private Network" connection to their services which then connect you to the internet. Typically meant for people who use WiFi hotspots a lot (where snooping is a much greater risk and issue) everything between you and the service is encrypted, thus your ISP can't see a thing. Of course the service can.
So it really all boils down to your level of paranoia, which could be quite legitimate or not, compared with the amount of effort you're willing to put into keeping your connection secure.
But ultimately I don't believe that their ISP snooping on them is something most people need to worry about.
Related:
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Ask Leo! - What can people tell from my IP address?
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Ask Leo! - How do I figure out who owns an IP address?
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Ask Leo! - Getting all worked up over IP tracing
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Ask Leo! - Can I get someone's name and address from their IP address?
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Ask Leo! - Just how secure is email, anyway?
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Ask Leo! - Email Encryption - Failure to Launch?
Article C3004 - April 25, 2007
My ISP, Wow Internet, gave me a second offense (first one was cause someone was downloading video game torrents) because I complained about stuff on my Twitter account. All I did was say that I hated my mom and that I hate that adolescents have no freedom. So yes, your ISP is monitoring your internet 24/7. And because I'm a minor, I can't do anything about it but sit there and be paranoid because I can't trust my ISP anymore.
05-Apr-2009
Leo, even though i use VPN can my ISP know the bandwith i'm using at any given point or the amount of data that i've downloaded?
04-Jun-2009
Great site! Can my ISP legally reveal internet usage to an employer if I use a company USB modem?
i understand they can only provide stats not details.
23-Jun-2009
Hello Leo, and all who have posted on this article!
My question is possibly like a few others that makes me wonder... However I do know that my ISP can do what ever they want too, if need be spy on me and what I'm doing online like, Surfing, Downloading, Reading Emails blah blah etc! But mainly its downloading that they are looking into on my PC. Is there such a way to possibly spy on my ISP!!!! to find out why they wanna know so much about me / what I do on my free time! I would be glad to know if anyone can answer that for me. Or help me find a better way to stop my ISP from knowing what I do online, Which is my own business not anyone elses. See I feel that it is a invasion of my privacy which no one should know what I do online. It is my own business like I said!
When ISPs do look at what you're up to, it's typically for one of three reasons: 1) someone complained to them about some aspect of your behaviour, 2) law enforcement has some kind of interest in you and came to your ISP with the appropriate paperwork, or 3) you caused some kind of technical difficulty - like perhaps using tons of bandwidth by running a server - that caught the ISPs attention.
There's only so much you can do. You can encrypt everything you're doing over a VPN, tunnel or some other kind of anonymization service, but even then things like the amount of bandwidth you use will always be visible to your ISP and may start them asking questions if it's causing problems.
The important thing here is simply to know that your ISP can see what you do by default. The probably don't, unless there's a good reason.
Don't take it personally, but you're just not that interesting.
23-Jul-2009
Posted by: Prowler at July 22, 2009 1:11 PM
ISP may not be interested in our email or websites we visit, but it is possible for a renegade or corrupt employee to do this with a little prodding and loose change from our enemies or competitiors. This is very true in a county like ours where cyber laws are still evolving and supervision and enforcement are lax. It is easy for the perpetrator, who by now would have ruined the customer, to go scot free while the ISP may get its reputation tarnished. In my case this snooping was happening for sometime and when I complained,the ISP, part of a billion dollar entity, was in denial mode at first and now have come around saying we'll investigate. Now I have decided to approach the top management to enlighten them on this and put in proper processes to help customers.
Posted by: Krish at September 23, 2009 5:30 AMOh, there's one more reason they might want to spy on you, as some of us Comcast subscribers have learned. They want to know what you think of them. Send a message with "Comcast Sucks" or "Lousy Comcast Service", etc., in your message subject line and you'll suddenly get "generic" messages from them wanting to know how to improve their service. Don't tell me they're not watching.
Posted by: Ginger Peechez at September 29, 2009 9:20 AMHi Leo. Alot of great info here. What a great find. Anyway, I have a question. If the government agency has a court order to search one's email conversation, how likely are they to search past email conversations? I mean do ISPs keep all emails from all their users or they have a time limit after which all emails beyond the time limits are erased from the ISP's database. Can ISP pull out all my email contents on a moment's notice? Just something I wanted to ask but no one to ask until now. Thanks.
13-Oct-2009
You're right, ISPs usually aren't very interested in monitoring and recording your online activities, but the government intelligence agencies are.
I would warn you about what's to come as far as the death of online privacy, but the fact is that the death has already occurred.
Over the past decade, the intelligence agencies have received virtually no resistance from ISPs in their pursuit of full monitoring access.
This is mainly because they lie to ISPs.
They tell them that their intention is to catch horrible people such as 'terrorists' and child pornographers, and then assure them that only those people will be monitored.
So, at this point, I guarantee you that the U.S. intelligence agencies are recording every single thing you're doing online.
And, thanks to exponentially advancing data storage technology, they have absolutely no reason to ever delete the information they've recorded.
Posted by: Jim at October 19, 2009 10:58 PMI think my friend has looked at undesirable sites and worry they are looking at me, if he has done how long before i found out.
Posted by: hugh at November 10, 2009 6:32 AMI looked at pornographic sites, nothing dodgy, merely women in bikinis and celebrity spyshots from paparazzi and used automobile sites, would an ISP really be interested in spying on me for that?
Posted by: John Doe at November 16, 2009 2:08 PM