Just Did a Little Fighting Back

Ysarex

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This is a test. Made the mistake of reading the news before I left the house to walk to the grocery store. That put me in a foul mood realizing Congress just sold me lock stock and barrel to my ISP: Congress Overturns Internet Privacy Regulation

Now Charter gets to log everything I (and my wife) do on the Internet and sell that info to whoever they want without notification or request. So walking and thinking, I just kept stewing over this and it p*sses me off. Then in an alley on the way home I came across this:

finger.jpg


And I figured it was a sign and it was time to fight back. So first thing I did when I got home was download and install the TOR browser: Tor Project: Anonymity Online It was a trivial install.

I'm using it now, routing through eastern Europe in the last few minutes and it's working just fine. It was amusing to try and do a Google search. Google apparently figures out what's going on and refuses to execute a search. Apparently the cost to use Google is very real if you find a way to circumvent it. Bing works just fine.

Charter gets paid every month for the service they provide. They don't need to sell me on top of that and neither do my government reps.

Joe
 
Sounds like a thing we had recently in the UK dubbed the "Snoopers Charter", though I don't think it goes as far as the one passed by your congress. I don't like either personally.
 
Sounds like a thing we had recently in the UK dubbed the "Snoopers Charter", though I don't think it goes as far as the one passed by your congress. I don't like either personally.

I appreciate that there are security issues involved and that it's probably a good idea that law enforcement should have a way to track back malicious activity and real threats to public safety -- no argument from me there. But that's not what this is about. This is plain and simple selling all of us and frankly putting our privacy (financial, medical, etc.) at risk so they can sell us as data. Plain and simple it's caving in to the ISPs who see in their subscriber base another source of income. It shouldn't be allowed at least not without our consent and frankly we should get paid if it is. Charter can sell my data all they want for 25% off my monthly bill.

Joe

P.S. Up for an hour now and still working just fine. Last I checked I was being routed through France.
 
I saw your post's title, and immediately I thought you'd done an anti-Exposure Triangle post...

..but this is just as good..., probably better, actually.
 
@Ysarex I saw that earlier, and made my blood boil as well. The thing that concerns me most is the "amount" of private data that they'll be able to sell in a package. From name, address, city, state, zip, phone number, sites you browse, and anything else they might have including SS#, credit history, past locations, non encrypted financial data.........This isn't good, and yet there was very little on the news about it. Go figure. I need to do some serious investigation on this.
 
Running the government like a business . . .

I'm not really up on IPs but I was under the impression that you are assigned one of the ISP's IP address when you connect. In my case, I think Comcast is grabbing the IP Address of my router/modem (10 dot on my side, 73 dot on Comcast's.)
 
Running the government like a business . . .

I'm not really up on IPs but I was under the impression that you are assigned one of the ISP's IP address when you connect. In my case, I think Comcast is grabbing the IP Address of my router/modem (10 dot on my side, 73 dot on Comcast's.)

When our modems connect we get assigned a temp IP. Disconnect and reconnect and you'll get a new temp IP. But your ISP -- whoever you're paying for internet access knows who you are as long as you're connected. They have your account info, as smoke noted: name, address, phone, credit card, everything you had to give them to sign up. Then they're going to keep a running log of everything you do online -- every site you visit, how often and for how long. Some ISPs will tell you how long they keep the log and some won't. It can range from 90 days to as much as a year. Law enforcement wants them to keep that log. And we should all agree that with an appropriate court order law enforcement should be able to get appropriate access. That's a whole lot different than your ISP turning that log into cash by selling it to advertisers which is what Congress basically just gave them permission to do.

Joe

P.S. More than two hours up now and working smoothly; currently being routed through Luxemburg. Charter's got nothing to log on me now.
 
@Ysarex The passing of this law didn't really change anything, it just prevented the implementation of regulations that were supposed to go in force.

I looked at the site you linked. I'm pretty sure a VPN will do the same, without as much lag time. Either way though you're only masking the traffic in between. As soon as you ping the destination site, they're grabbing everything they can.
 
@Ysarex The passing of this law didn't really change anything, it just prevented the implementation of regulations that were supposed to go in force.

I looked at the site you linked. I'm pretty sure a VPN will do the same, without as much lag time. Either way though you're only masking the traffic in between. As soon as you ping the destination site, they're grabbing everything they can.

VPNs cost money. I'm not a network expert but I certainly got the impression from the TOR site that their method would block the ISP from logging the sites you visit. I'll keep reading.

Joe
 
@Ysarex both methods block the ISP from logging your traffic, but internet sites are notorious for setting cookies, which I try to block but some sites won't work unless you accept them. Once you do guess what??
 
I only hit this and a couple other sites, regularly. I guess I'll could walk across the street to the library, or do serious crap at work. I won't try the neighbor's unsecured wi-fi since that's a felony. :cool:
 
Where the heck have you guys been?
You're about 10 years late to the fight.

How do you think the owners of TPF can afford to keep this web site available without charging a fee to join?
Right now I have 8 advertising trackers, 2 social media trackers, 1 site analytics tracker, and 2 advertisements blocked.
I just did a quick check and Blur has blocked 32,352 trackers from collecting information from my computer in just the last 2 months.
Since I'm a TPF member that's just a fraction of all the trackers Guests would have attached to visiting TPF.

If you use a VPN lots of web sites won't let you access their content.
Tor will slow down your Internet access to one extent or another as it re-routes your URL requests to mask where/who you are..

You should also be clearing all your system and browser caches several times a day.
 
Sorry to be a bummer but they have been doing this illegally for years, nothing has changed. Now they just made it legal to perform illegal violations of our constitutional rights. This is the perfect example of why the media is so dangerous. American Citizens are now officially STUPID as a group. We should have never let this happen. I did my part but not many others cared. Ummm and TOR doesn't do crap but make it a wee bit harder, like maybe five minutes to figure out who you are.
 
@KmH pretty much what I said earlier though you went into much more detail. Obviously owners of sites can't just operate forever without some source of income stream. Advertising is annoying but it pays the bills. If they just stopped there it wouldn't be so bad, but like a drug addict, most can't. Any data they can discover about you has value.

I grew up with the Internet, from the beginning. First it was Cookies (which are still there) that concerned me, but they're nothing compared to the Bots, Spiders, Web Crawlers, and now the latest Fingerprinting. Fingerprinting doesn't need your IP address, it identifies your computer based on a number of factors from battery status to fonts used in your browser, to things even the experts aren't quite sure of yet.

As I said earlier the new law doesn't change anything for providers other than prevent the implementation of "new" privacy restrictions on IP providers. From what I've read though it solidifies an IP's right to mine your data, and sell that data. Something that concerns me because of the amount of data the IP requires to set up the account in the first place.
 
OK then, is there any effective way to stop my ISP from collecting a running log of everything my family does on the internet?

Joe
 

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