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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.
I 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
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