What does an ISP monitor?

  • Thread starter Thread starter S_Nyaya
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S_Nyaya

Hi,

Can anyone inform me if ISPs monitor and log every user's online activity -
websites visited, email sent and received, newsgroup messages posted or
read, and any other online transaction including purchases?

Also, do web-servers or news-servers maintain user activity logs?

This is purely to settle a point of discussion which cropped up talking
about online databases and other storage space. One got to wondering where
all the massive capacity surely needed to maintain such logs comes from.
Again, how are web-mail companies as Google or Yahoo or Hotmail able to give
out free 100 or 200 or 2000 MB mail storage space to uncounted millions of
users!!!

Thanks in anticipation.

Satyanyaya
 
S_Nyaya said:
Hi,

Can anyone inform me if ISPs monitor and log every user's online activity -
websites visited, email sent and received, newsgroup messages posted or
read, and any other online transaction including purchases?

Also, do web-servers or news-servers maintain user activity logs?

This is purely to settle a point of discussion which cropped up talking
about online databases and other storage space. One got to wondering where
all the massive capacity surely needed to maintain such logs comes from.
Again, how are web-mail companies as Google or Yahoo or Hotmail able to give
out free 100 or 200 or 2000 MB mail storage space to uncounted millions of
users!!!

Thanks in anticipation.

Satyanyaya
Click to expand...

First, let me say I am no expert on how ISPs conduct their business, but
here are a few ideas to consider:

Almost certainly email sent and received is stored on the servers;
otherwise, how would they be able to retrieve these for you when asked?

Things like web sites visited and other items are probably not stored,
but could be. If they were stored strictly as text files then although
potentially huge, they wouldn't necessarily be unmanageable.

Another thing to keep in mind is that for 'old' logs, etc., they don't
necessarily have to be stored 'online' - they could be stored on backup
tapes and be made available if needed.

As to monitoring activity, it would depend on your definition of
monitoring. For ISPs that provide netnanny-type services, they do have
to monitor activity to some extent. But do they have staff sitting at a
monitor watching an individual's activity? Highly unlikely - they have
other things to do.

How do yahoo and others get away with allowing so much email storage for
free? Well, you can be certain that most users make use of only a small
percentage of that storage, and a lot of the storage that is used is
devoted to spam which is usually deleted after X number of days to
reduce the overall storage requirements.

A couple of other things to keep in mind: yahoo and others probably have
more than one site for users to access their email from. I wouldn't be
surprised if there were regional sites for this purpose, each with
massive amounts of storage capacity. Also, using modern storage
techniques, you can have racks of just storage - you don't need
individual motherboards/cpus to access these storage units separately.

--
The reader should exercise normal caution and backup the Registry and
data files regularly, and especially before making any changes to their
PC, as well as performing regular virus and spyware scans. I am not
liable for problems or mishaps that occur from the reader using advice
posted here. No warranty, express or implied, is given with the posting
of this message.
 
S_Nyaya said:
Can anyone inform me if ISPs monitor and log every user's online
activity - websites visited, email sent and received, newsgroup
messages posted or read, and any other online transaction including
purchases?
Also, do web-servers or news-servers maintain user activity logs?

This is purely to settle a point of discussion which cropped up
talking about online databases and other storage space. One got to
wondering where all the massive capacity surely needed to maintain
such logs comes from. Again, how are web-mail companies as Google or
Yahoo or Hotmail able to give out free 100 or 200 or 2000 MB mail
storage space to uncounted millions of users!!!

Thanks in anticipation.
Click to expand...

All of the questions you asked depends on the entity in question and their
location. It is entirely possibly that some are required to monitor by law.
It is also possible some do not monitor so they cannot be held liable.

It certainly is POSSIBLE they monitor everything a user connected through
their service does. They control the network, so they can see everything
going over it.

(Same answer goes for your web/news server part of the question.)

As for the "massive space required" - have you looked at the price of
storage lately?
You can have terabytes of wasted space for very little in relative terms.
 
Hi,

Thanks for the informative responses. It is really appreciated. I do agree
that storage space is indded very cheap nowadays. Also, I am coming to
realize that this monitoring is really a pretty complex topic!

Regards.

Satyanyaya
 
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