So do you need it ?
Do you really need online privacy protection or is it just a matter of being careful whilst you’re online. Well I guess it depends on how much you value your privacy but let me assure you that pretty much everything you do on the internet is logged, stored and very often monitored. You have virtually no privacy online and no protection and I’m afraid that’s the truth.
Let’s start with your ISP and see how that affects your privacy protection, your logs there will show every web site you’ve visited, every picture you’ve viewed or downloaded. There’s more, if you download a file from a torrent site it’s recorded there, posted something on a forum or sent a steamy love email to a friend , well it’s all in clear text and it’s all logged there.
This is the point where you lose most of your online privacy via your ISP, surfing through a transparent, anonymous, super secure proxy ‘aint going to help either – it’s all logged way before that point.
If anyone wants to track anyone down through their IP address there’s only one place they need to go – straight to your ISP and their logs. Of course ISPs aren’t terribly fond of being in this position, all this data is expensive to store and would be impossible to monitor. Which is why Governments around the world are putting in legal measures that force them to keep this data – the European Data directive is just one but it’s matched in the US and across the globe by other directives aimed at collecting information.
It just forces ISP logs to be kept for up to two years so that they can be viewed and tracked. That’s mine and your web surfing logs, that’s both our online privacy being invaded, they can find out exactly what anybody does online via these logs.
It’s hardly surprising they want to do this, information privacy is one thing but imagine the power of being able to analyse every web site, every picture, every email of an individual. I’m sure each and every one of us has something in their web logs that they’d rather keep private and that’s why it is important to protect your privacy online.
SO remember if you want any online privacy protection at all you need to encrypt your connection, all the anonymous proxies in the world are pointless when you have a complete list of all your activities sitting in your ISP.
