Help! Can my ISP compromise my privacy?

[nihil]

I live in a country where personal privacy isn't all that respected. Recently, I've encountered a problem. It seems that some people are aware of some info that I posted in some sites on the internet.

If only one of those sites was in your country, that would explain it. The website will have the IP address of posters and the ISP knows whose account was using it. OK, that doesn't prove who was actually using the computer, but:

and no one else uses my computer.

If you happen to have cable or satellite then you probably have a static IP address which makes the trace even simpler.

I got spanked by my company for once posting on an internet forum from my company computer and it was done anonymously.

Most companies monitor (log) internet connections from their servers. They would see the traffic going out as well. Most websites show the date and time of posts. You don't need to be a FED to figure it out from there.

[itPro]

Just to add to what was said earlier, e-mail is typically not secure. You can change this, however. If you get an e-mail certificate and your friend gets an e-mail certificate, you can both send e-mail to each other and then import each others certificates. Once that happens, you can send encrypted e-mail to each other that can't be read by someone that might have access to it, whether it is your ISP, a hacker between you and your friend, or anyone else that might somehow gain access to the file.

http://www.comodo.com/products/certi...rtificate.html

[Computernerd22]

Hi guys, I need help...

I suspect that the internet service provider I'm using is compromising my privacy. If someone who works in the ISP company decides to check up on their customers...


and another way would be if the FBI/CYBERSECURITY/NSA/LOCAL POLICE ETC.. supoened your ISP to hand over the information then yup you would be phucked.

1) Is it possible for them to track which websites the customer has been to?

2) If they wanted to, can they get access to the stuff that the customer types, like email passwords, or even email content?

I know the ISP I worked for here in the United States of America we had the customers: first name & last name, last 4 digits of SSN, home address and or P.O Box, telephone number, also, username/password for troubleshooting issues and email/sign in issues etc... This is usually obtained by verifying the authentication question aka 'secret question' if they wanted to they could log in and check there email and stuff like that but actually seeing what the user was doing surfing habit wise, nope the only way I know we did when we accessed there computers with remote access software but that was strictly for troubleshooting purposes and the client had to grant permission on his PC to even get it to work. But monitor customer data aka (surfing habits) I don't think so. They may store the DATA on there servers for a period of time but physically seeing the websites hell no.

Why you so worried about the ISP monitoring your surfing habits?

[[the]Punisher]

Just to answer Nihil's question about Gmail, it is only secured during login to protect the password. Anything sent after that is completely fair game.

[brokencrow]

Picking off emails is a sport of sort in Washington, D.C. My bro and I had email that ended up over at the eff-bee-eye as a result of his political affiliation years ago. Made me really paranoid for awhile.

If you run Gmail on a client (Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.), SSL is used for both incoming and outgoing mail. That makes it more secure than their web-based interface.

Try JanusVM for a quick off-the-shelf tunneling solution. I generally recommend it to folks wanting the security of a VPN but without the network resources. Be aware, it will slow your internet connection. iPIG is another one. Both would probably defeat your ISP, but who knows what lurks at those endpoints.

http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/1168

http://www.iopus.com/iPig/