What type of information is visible to internet providers?

Question

This is a technical question - I respect anonymity and would like people to respect mine - what type of data is visible to them? Urls, emails, search engine entries? How much does it help using anonymous free proxy service web sites like InvisibleSurfing.com? Please don't post any urban legends, I need professional IT information :) Thank you!

Just to add: I'm asking about MY internet proviider and I live in the UK. Could you tell me if there is a way so that my ISP wouldn't see my urls, emails and searches? Are annonymous proxy websites not good for that? I just hate the thought of someone going through my stuff and my private life!

Answer 1

Hello,

I used to work in the IT & computer industry (10 years +) and am MCSE trained. OK! to try and answer this question is challenging because its a complex subject area. So its difficult to know how much detail you want, it all does get abit scary at times.

No.1 an ISP will obviously know who you are by your account details & through the way you pay for your service. So they already have name & address & bank and payment details. That's standard if you like.

No.2 The ISP will know when you last logged into their network & how long your connection session was (i.e. 20mins or 20days).

No.3 The ISP will know your unique IP address of your machine on the network, or if the IP is dynamic then which IP you had during your connection session.

No.4 YES! an ISP has to now keep by law archived or backup copies of internet related activities and these include all emails & websites (URLS) you've visited in the last 5years. How they can do this is another less clear question.

This is specifically incases where the police are trying to track online fraude or child porn users & sites. i.e anything illegal. But police have to make a formal request to the ISP for that access, they cannot just turn up and demand it without a good reason.

**Emails should be treated as if anyone could read them at anytime, so dont say anything in them that you dont want others to know about. **This has caute out ALOT of people in the past.

**ALL emails in the world are said to pass through "Eshilon" (not sure if thats how its spelt?) which is a global system of information gathering setup by the US goverment and was supposed to be secret but isnt any more of course. In other words its a global spying network? it listens for key kinds of information. Its based on several continents & includes the UK, australia & USA and few other places I cannot recall right now. Oh! its 24/7 and 365 days of the year. Oh! and its ALL global communications NOT just the internet or emails, phone calls, mobile phones,etc,etc. Scary if its true?

**YES! you can use encryption & PKI methods such as PGP software to protect your privacy when using emails. But its NOT a simple task to setup and you have to have a reasonably good grasp of how it works before you use it. I've played around with it and its very impressive.

**YES! annonymous proxies can protect others from knowing which sites you ultimately visited but its still clear to your ISP that your using a proxy server. But having said that they cannot stop you, its your choice. But another way to look at it, is if your using a proxy you must have something to hide,etc. See I told you its a complex subect area.

I could talk alot more about this topic but I think I've said enough for now, hope that helps?

Regards to you!

IR

Answer 2

Unless there is specific measures put in place on a certain customer, the routers do not "record" any activity aside from bandwidth usage. At a given time, an ISP can look and see what type of activity is being used, as in how much bandwidth via a certain port. This is used to investigate possibly viral activities. Also BitTorrents are real easy to spot, since there are multiple connections made from the well-known BitTorrent ports.

But as for your concern about anonymity, I wouldn't be too concerned about the ISP. Anybody with enough knowledge would be able to view your open ports and monitor information coming from/to your public IP.

Answer 3

under the new information / data act, "can't remeber the exact title".

isp's, log information such as emails & web pages visited on day and times etc.

but these are only supposed to be viewed by police & other goverment bodies. in certain circumstances.

not sure about the use of proxy sites

Answer 4

1) is it your own isp? then they have all the information they need (because you need to give them your information to bill you). via their servers, they can track wherey ou've gone (ie, url's, ip's etc) and also know what emails you get via their email servers (from which ips and the sort)

2) if its another isp or website? then they record your IP address via their servers.

Freeproxy servers are still trackable, and no guaratees to protect you.

Answer 5

all of it most any good techi will know how to get most data of the web and your information as well

Answer 6

your ip address