Is Your ISP Spying On You? - clyburnnotle1973

Arcticsid asked the Answer Line forum if his ISP can buoy "take it easy…watch a screen, and see everything you are doing at some tending meter?"

Non rather, but IT's frightening shut up. Your Internet service provider tracks what IP addresses you contact, which in effect means they know the network sites you'atomic number 75 visiting. They can also read anything you direct over the Net that isn't encrypted. Whether they actually do that is an open inquiry.

Reported to Dan Auerbach, a Staff Technologist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, what they largely collect is metadata–things like IP addresses and port numbers. With a petty bit of crop, this information buns tell them WHO you'rhenium communicating with and help them make an well-read guess nigh whether you visited a Web page OR sent e-mail. Eastern Samoa Auerbach told me in a phone conversation, they're tracking "who you're sending mail to but non the content."

So what about content? Canful they ascertain what pages on that Web site you visited, and what you wrote in that netmail? Yes, they can, if they choose to do sol. But that's a lot of run with very little refund for them. And in that respect are aggregation limits. For instance, in the United States, ISPs buns but share content with the authorities (I'll let you decide if you find that consolatory). On the other paw, thither are no such restrictions happening with whom they can plowshare your metadata.

There's "a good deal of opacity surrounding what they actually dress," says Auerbach. "Information technology's difficult to know what a given ISP is doing with the data." Privacy policies, of course, are seldom holographic to be clear and understandable.

How long brawl they retain the information? "Close to between six months and two years," estimates Auerbach.

And how seat you protect yourself?

First, embrace any technology that encrypts the data for its Internet travel. If you need privacy, use Secure Socket Layer (SSL–secure web pages with URLs starting with https) or a virtual toffee-nosed net (VPN).

If you're really paranoid, you might want to weigh Tor, a free program and service that makes it a great deal more difficult to track where you're going online. For more information, see Tor Meshwork Cloaks Your Browsing From Nosiness Eyes.

Read the original forum discussion.

Contributive Editor Lincoln Spector writes about technology and cinema. E-mail your technical school questions to him at answer@pcworld.com , operating theatre brand them to a community of helpful folks on the PCW Answer Line assembly . Follow Lincoln on Twitter , or subscribe to the Answer Line newsletter , e-mailed weekly.