ISP History Records, What are your options?

Hi everyone! I wanted to shed some light on a very interesting subject. ISP History Records! How long have you been with your trusty Internet Service Provider? Normally people believe by simply clicking clear history that their surfing habits have been thrown away into the abyss, forever to be forgotten. Some people have been with their ISP's for years, maybe even more than a decade now if they got lucky by providing satisfactory service. This makes me wonder... with all these secretive, classified, declassified, technologies and programs being used to monitor patterns within society and individuals... Do you think there is a possibility we have been the test subjects of a monitoring program? Imagine, they could have the power to know exactly the type of person we were in the history of our contracted agreement. Some of us on here were born before the internet existed, others were born into a world held by this wonderful technology.

Have you ever stop to think... can i delete my PERSONAL(?) Internet Service Providers Internet Browsing History Records?

I am not the best at being a detective, but i know this calls for something more than just another thread, help me out ATS, what do you know about this topic?



[edit on 11-7-2010 by drkid]

once upon a time about 7-8 years ago
I contacted my ISP and inquired about
ISP Logs.

They informed me that they do not keep
history logs over a month old as it takes
up too much space to keep tabs on everyone.

Things may have changed since then though
but a great question.

Whatever. I don't mean any disrespect to you, OP. I know how to erase my trails on my computers. But, really, do I give a rats butt who knows where I visit in the great world of the internet? Nope. I have nothing to hide. And if it comes to a time when I must worry that someone else than my wife knows where I have been? I still won't give a rats butt. The most important thing to me is my wife isn't upset where I go. So far she hasn't been concerned.

Meanwhile, good info.

No, it would be impossible to keep all the data. They will only keep info on those that are flagged, although these days they are starting to force ISP's to log emails etc under a new EU law...so i don't know if that's heading to an all out logging of info. As to whether people should care, im not one to support the saying that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about...ridiculous argument imo.

I've worked for an ISP for 13 years. There is some data which we keep, such as dialup logs and email logs (the sender and recipient, not the actual email itself), but browsing history? Absolutely not. In fact, for small to medium sized ISPs, there's no cheap, practical way to log and store that much data for any period of time. Most logs that are kept contain connection details only (i.e. user connected on this day, at this time), not the actual data being sent and received via that connection.

Even for those logs, we only keep a months worth, and then they're rotated off automatically.

I'm sure the larger organizations have something in place for this, but it's paranoid to think all, or even the majority, of ISPs can and do this sort of information collecting.

As for options, there's always something like Tor. Keep in mind, even if you use a proxy server to bounce your web connection off of, the traffic is still able to be captured by your ISP. It would hide nothing from them whatsoever. Something like Tor, Freenet or some sort of VPN connection are the only ways I can think of to actually hide what you're doing.

[edit on 11-7-2010 by Melen]

Some ISPs will keep the browsing history for a while, just don't know for how long. I found this out when I called in one day to find out why half the sites wouldn't come up. It just turned out something on their side with my connections and they fixed it.

As I was on the phone with him, he went thru our history and starting saying "well you aren't using a lot of band width, I notice you aren't doing online gaming, I don't see those sites here....."

Its a large satellite provider, so I think they just keep stuff for a month or so, he said they review people now and again, to check if someone is using more than their fair share of band width, by the sites they visit.

Originally posted by Melen
I've worked for an ISP for 13 years. There is some data which we keep, such as dialup logs and email logs (the sender and recipient, not the actual email itself), but browsing history? Absolutely not. In fact, for small to medium sized ISPs, there's no cheap, practical way to log and store that much data for any period of time. Most logs that are kept contain connection details only (i.e. user connected on this day, at this time), not the actual data being sent and received via that connection.

Even for those logs, we only keep a months worth, and then they're rotated off automatically.

I'm sure the larger organizations have something in place for this, but it's paranoid to think all, or even the majority, of ISPs can and do this sort of information collecting.

As for options, there's always something like Tor. Keep in mind, even if you use a proxy server to bounce your web connection off of, the traffic is still able to be captured by your ISP. It would hide nothing from them whatsoever. Something like Tor, Freenet or some sort of VPN connection are the only ways I can think of to actually hide what you're doing.

[edit on 11-7-2010 by Melen]

Thats really good information. Also to the other posters, im not paranoid about my browsing history, i think i mainly wanted to know what happens to that data because i could only find little information on it. Thanks.

You should probably realise some tracking cookies especialy those employed by google last for up to 30 years.

search for Traffic Analysis and understand the internet.

Originally posted by Johnze
You should probably realise some tracking cookies especialy those employed by google last for up to 30 years.

search for Traffic Analysis and understand the internet.

Browser cookies are 100% under your control (whether you accept them, and whether you keep them), so that's really a separate issue.

reply to post by Melen


No thats not how they work, of course you can obviously deny cookies on your system and take nothing to do with them. Cookies are #ing evil, do not be fooled, yes i know the use they potentialy have, very good.

Some sites will refuse to work, some sites likes ATS that rely on ad revenue wont appreciate it. But you will not be allowing your machine to be infiltrated by one of the most insidious form of spying there is.

Also disable java and stop saving # to your cache.

And use Scroogle Scraper

www.scroogle.org...


With a good firewall and a secure DNS and any light form of traffic monitoring you should be fine.

If your realy paranoid start traveling through an anonyminity network, be fairly warned says i for there be dragons.

Its not particulary the ISP's im worried about, well not untill they start handing over out data to the government as per law now. Its been my experiance the ISP;s dont really give a #, its who;s watching your traffic that is the problem.

[edit on 11-7-2010 by Johnze]

reply to post by Solomons

No, it would be impossible to keep all the data.

Sorry i think your wrong.

if you strip out attachments to emails and images then you are left with about 6k of data including the headers so thats 166 emails per meg 1,660 per gig and with the cost of 1gb on a hard drive being about 50 pence it means you could keep details on say four peoples emails for about 50p a year buying drives at pc-world prices.

web browsing

Each header request is about 1k and by the time you strip out all the rubish and adverts then you could record the data using 300 bytes per page and throw on top post data that is very small to make it around 500 bytes a page.

thats 2000 pages per meg in the requests.

The responce is much bigger but is not needed to know where you go or what you say and web pages only needs to be indexed once on the main servers.

Have you seen how good google is who will have this page indexed within the day and then allow you or me to search for it whislt runing another 20m searches in the same second for other people.

$100 for your lifes browsing history is something they would pay given they get that much petrol tax from most people each week and if the ISP's are not doing this now then you can bet it's being done at some of the main routers and all they need from the ISP's is connection logs for leased IP which would take up next to no space.

HTTPS or SSL is not so easy to record but people will use this more and more in the future but i myself could manage to build a man in the middle server that can intercept SSL messages and do you realy think they would allow messages to be sent so easily across the world without having any back doors because i don't and it would be classed as munitians in the USA was it un crackable by MOSSAD/CIA.

I don't know much about using VPN with custom encryption (NOT FROM MS) but i suspect i soon will do but i think it wise to consider anything i do today is recorded already.

reply to post by Johnze


yes good post but tell em about the flash cookies and user data (not user cache) if they are using IE and the danger of emails and eTags.

If your realy paranoid start traveling through an anonyminity network, be fairly warned says i for there be dragons.

Yes i second that and could write a book on public proxy servers and the danger but do note most are not annonious and even some that look like they are encrypt your IP and send it as an eTag and any that allow you to post data and are free must not be trusted with passwords and bank details.

Apart from Codeen servers all these so called public proxy servers keep moving about and you need to update the server lists because the criminals behind them are being chased themselves by police.

The Tor network seems to be the best methord and you can download a plugin for firefox but even that can be subject to pack sniffing.

Please don't use Tor for Torrents

Proxy servers can also do hidden redirects and tamper with any cookies on your machine however this can be turned to an advantage.

Would anyone use a semi malicious proxy server that would share the same google cookie it places on your machine between hundreds of other users to at least confuse the likes of google or has anyone seen this type of thing done before ?

That would maybe sound like claiming somone maybe a terrorist casue they have 4,000 books in their collection and 10% are about weapons and bombs while the other 90% are about philosophy, art, literature ,etc. Can you honestly know what maybe most important to anyone basedupon the information they access? It seems like a very far stretch to imply motive and almost impossible to prove even in a legal court, so whatever, jury nullification would stop any attempts to Inquisition people on the basis of what they might have been reading, remember most people will galnce and read the first paragraph or two and often click away to somewhere else, so in that sense it doesn't mean much to say someone might have read something evil, if such a thing really exists. Information maybe like anything else it depends on what a person does with it.

I have been with mine for a long time. I sometimes call in every few months to have a reset on my IP to change the address. I also like my service because I can also hide my IP when I need to.

reply to post by drkid


It's not ISPs that you want to be worried about. It's Google and facebook since they are a data mining type of website.

I notice on face book they say it's a social network yet I watched how they grew up and where it's going. So far face book became a market network not a social network.
You would ask what's the difference and why does it matter. A social network website is a website that is built so you or me can talk to one another as a friend. This means we make conversation just like how you talk to your friends or meet new people you generally talk.

A market network is a website where they have businesses talk to other businesses and also be able to directly talk to possible customers. This is what facebook turned out to be today.

You would say so what why is that important. Well it's important to mainly people that use face book that provide any information to them. From other articles I read about they also tied connections to many other data mining companies. I even was told that the IRS and FBI currently watch what people do on facebook and myspace.

I laugh at seeing companies or businesses or colleges making a facebook account. If they read the agreements they just now gave facebook the right to take logos or take any information they provided to them and use it however they want to.

So if you are a company and have a nice company logo design and you signed up with facebook and uploaded it then automatically facebook can take that images and make modifications to it so it becomes their new logo or they can take that logo and write a story on your company or resell it if they wanted to.

Like the above said your ISP's don't keep your browsing data logs that long. The reason is because it gets costly to store that much useless data.

You should worry about websites you use on how they use your information this can also mean government websites.

Originally posted by computerwiz32
reply to post by drkid

 

It's not ISPs that you want to be worried about. It's Google and facebook since they are a data mining type of website.

You are absolutely correct on this. I, also, shake my head when I hear of businesses and such creating facebook accounts. I think it's sites like these, which give an entirely false sense of being able to control your privacy, that will ultimately be someones undoing.

Let me be blunt. As I've said, I've worked for an ISP for over 12 years now (13? Starting to lose count), in every aspect of the company. There is nothing, network or systems oriented, that I'm not aware of. We, frankly, don't want your data. None of it. We collect what we are legally required to collect, and not a shred more.

Why? Easy. Responding to subpoenas for data is incredibly time consuming. Unless you have a good system in place, aggregating and searching the available data is absolutely mind numbing. I'm talking about your small to medium size ISP here. Obviously larger companies have many more resources to pull from.

That being said, managing that amount of data is getting increasingly easier and cheaper. We have a number of SAN/NAS devices and are capable of storing somewhere around 100TB of data, and like I said we're a rather small company. Those devices aren't JBODs either, they're high end Netapp devices.

The reality of the situation, tho, is that most small to medium sized ISPs want nothing more than to report back that we have no available data and move on.