Is Your ISP Eavesdropping On You?
Everyone uses ISPs to log on to the internet, but not many of us think about how much our ISPs know about us. They have access to all our surfing records, search records, download and upload records… what do they do with all this information?
Well, in most cases, they store the information in databases for a certain amount of time and then discard it. Big corporations providing internet services have solid privacy policies that they make a point to follow. Any deviance can get them sued by conscious consumers. But what about the not so big ISPs?
I am talking about the small ISPs providing broadband connections through cables and power lines, which have mushroomed in several third world countries. These companies provide internet access at dirt-cheap rates, and obviously, people make a run for it. But with such pricing strategies, there has got to be a trade off, and that trade off is computer and data security.
Most of these companies use a program called Cyberoam to give their customers access to the net. Cyberoam can keep track of the upload, download limits of the customer and can deactivate their internet access the day the subscription runs out. What more can it do?
A visit to their website tells us that Cyberoam has the capability to track exactly where each of its users are visiting, how much and what data they are uploading and downloading, what keywords they are searching for, what IM conversations they are having, and much more. It can be a very useful tool for big companies who need to track their own internal internet usage. But what happens when a small ISP with no clear privacy policy begins to use it?
A reader sends in her horror story: I am a web services professional and used to work from home at night. My colleagues used to coordinate with me through Yahoo! Messenger. One day, I started getting strange messages while I was working with my colleagues.
It seemed like someone was reading our conversations. Messages began to pop up with reference to our work. Each day the sender’s name would be different, but the chilling part was that they were all very similar to the names on my friends list.
We were at our wit’s end when a friend of ours from a networking background suggested that it could be coming from our ISP. We contacted their head who promptly refused any wrong-doing. But strangely, we didn’t have any interruptions after that.
So friends, next time to you subscribe to an internet service, make sure you read the fine print. For who knows whether your information is safe in the hands of an unknown corporation.
