I have a question and hope someone can answer as much as possible as im unable to get any clarification here. do ISP's (in my case, SKY) log user activity? In otherwords, do they log things like what services the user was accessing (IM), the content of conversations or emails/webmail, what websites the user visited and so on? If so, how long do they keep the logs for before they are removed?
UK ISP's currently retain information for a year - this is also going to be part of a EU-wide legislation. The information is stored on every user, and can be used in a court of law retrospectively. The government is seeking further information from ISP's on the 3rd party apps you might be using, Like Skype, and messengers, etc. read Some Uk ISP's dabbled with PHORM ... but this seems to be "on hold" for the moment. I can't remember the ISP's that are still doing trials, I think Virgin is one of a few that haven't rejected the idea completely. If you don't already know about PHORM you might want to look into it, in particular - SKY's position with PHORM. Check out PHORM Here BT did some secret testing with this company and didn't inform it's subscribers that they were being monitored ... BT took huge flak and it seemed to have spooked all the other UK ISP's. Basically, ISP's see a way to make money from your internet habits. Phorm are prepared to pay them money to know your actions on the internet, gathering user trend information. Those are the basic facts - I guess each to their own deciding if this is suspect or not. And finally you have GCHQ Here these guys are also in on the invasion of UK citizens privacy. Whichever way you look at it ... you're screwed. Happy Christmas
Yes, is the short answer ... but not fully. Since April of 2009, this applies ... “Communications data is information about a communication. It does not include the content of a communication. It can show when a communication happened, where it came from and where it was going, but it cannot show what was said or written […] For a given telephone call, communications data can include the telephone numbers involved, and the time and place the call was made, but not what was said. For an e-mail it might include the e-mail address from which the message was sent, and where it was sent to, but not the content of the e-mail.” What is “communications data”? In this sense, communications data consists of: • Trafic data – information about communications • Service use data – which includes telephone call records, itemized billing, records of connections to the Internet • Subscriber data – information held by CSPs about individuals such as who owns what phone number or owns a particular email account, together with their home address etc The above info comes from a study by the London School of Economics titled Interception Modernisation Programme. The Home Secretary has to issue an interception warrant. The ISP's have an agreement to supply the data. What the government are missing at the moment is the juicy stuff in the middle, the content of a communication. I imagine the somewhat liberal laws of other euro states prevent the UK government being able to fully access communication content, for the moment. Once they get on line with UK and Germany it will be standard. As for Phorm (and the likes, they are not alone), who knows ... I definitely steer clear of any ISP that sells data mining info to 3rd parties. You can get around a fair degree of the UK internet snooping by using a pay-as-you-go-internet USB stick. They're pretty much as anonymous as you are going to get right now.
thanks thats kinda what i thought today in regards to using a PAYG USB inet stick. curious to know if they would disclose things like MSN contact details/information for example who you were talking to, who you blocked/unblocked/added/deleted etc...
They can sure get your chat records and your text messages. With no problem as far as I know. I have heard of this happening. And I strongly suspect that every letter that you type can be accessed.
I am not sure of Microsoft's data retention policy. But you might be interested in googling "Yahoo Issues Takedown Notice for Spying Price List" ... recently Yahoo's relationship with law enforcement was exposed (I am not sure if we're allowed to post any of the information seeing Yahoo have legally removed it from the internet??). I imagine both companies (Yahoo & Microsoft) have similar policy when it comes to data-interception requests. Safe to say that your every move whilst using a chat client is going to be stored on servers for a time period. Your messaging contacts, any email sent, the lot. You can easily become identifiable if you reveal any personal information whilst using chat clients - often a part your account personal details (aka zip/postal code/ISP details) are assigned to the log-in cookie - so to always identify you on the server. You are not obligated to reveal your true life story on account profiles. Data retention policy is often made public - so Microsoft's shouldn't be hard to find, if you're really curious.
thanks. i wouldnt understand how they would manage to store ALL the communication. this is millions of text/messages and millions of users. i did email and ask them but they say that they do not store message on their servers ? pretty much the UK or maybe any country is not safe of privacy!
Yes. Nowhere is safe. And the U.K. is worse than the U.S.....if you can imagine that. But storing all of that is not a problem. Someone here posted a story about some big storage facility that is being built out West. Huge!
