Does your ISP have your browsing history on file? ( BT Virgin)

Associate
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Seems like a relatively decent place to ask... have they been filming new pornos during the pandemic? I daren't google the question for internet history reasons.
Your ISP can't see the contents of your internet traffic as it is encrypted, and would anyway be far too expensive to store all that data. They are only able to log that you visited a particular website at a certain time. Example, if you search for something on google they see that you visited google.com, not what you searched for.
 
Associate
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What about my employer?

For the original question, I mean, it might be against the law to film it during the pandemic, but that's pretty funny since the industry has always had problems with viruses anyway.
 
Soldato
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I think they can just see the website/ip addresses you connect to, like if you was visiting adult orientated websites they would see the web address as an ip (unless they auto lookup the ip address). But they wouldnt be able to see that chicken pron you've been in to recently.

I think if you use a VPN they can only see the VPN hosts ip address. Though the VPN will be able to see which website/ip address you connected to. Most of those companies are obliged to hand over any record (I think 5 years worth?) if you become the focus of a criminal investigation and they request it.
 
Soldato
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Utter filth
 
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Who cares? I literally moaned at o2 instore because I couldn't access xhamster on my phone without vpn. Quick flash of invalid driving licence and it got sorted. Could have done it over phone but no cc.
 
Caporegime
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ISP can still tell what websites you visited even with a VPN. Y'all need bigger tinfoil hats if you want them to be totally unable to log.

Since others have debunked that it saves me the effort, but it is the law that ISP's keep logs of the sites you visited and that certain content between consenting adults, as well as goods and services are illegal. I can't think of anything less tin foil hat than a law literally in writing on the government website, just a bizarre comment.
 
Soldato
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Since others have debunked that it saves me the effort, but it is the law that ISP's keep logs of the sites you visited and that certain content between consenting adults, as well as goods and services are illegal. I can't think of anything less tin foil hat than a law literally in writing on the government website, just a bizarre comment.
:confused:

What?
 
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Your ISP can't see the contents of your internet traffic as it is encrypted, and would anyway be far too expensive to store all that data. They are only able to log that you visited a particular website at a certain time. Example, if you search for something on google they see that you visited google.com, not what you searched for.

Google itself knows what you have searched for though. There was a court case about 10 years ago about a paedophile called Mark Bridger who killed a young girl, and the court was able to obtain the search terms that he has used on Google. I know this is a rare example, but it shows that Google will share your history if a judge orders so.
 
Soldato
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Yes but they cannot just casually browse it as they like, it needs higher authority.

If you use a VPN (you should these days) then no.
 

Pho

Pho

Soldato
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As far as I'm aware the most likely way they could monitor your habbits is when you use their DNS servers.

Switching your router / devices to alternative ones, e.g., Cloudflare/OpenDNS/Google would be better.

Though DNS isn't encrypted as default, so even if you switch to another server they could still see the raw request being passed on to the other server. However, Chrome/Firefox now support encrypted DNS (DoH - DNS over HTTPS) which encrypts this too. So without a VPN all your ISP can see is you connecting to an IP. You need to enable it in their options.

(you could also run something like https://github.com/cloudflare/cloudflared (see here) on a Pi and/or in conjunction with PiHole and point your DHCP to serve this IP for DNS to use encrypted DNS on all your devices)
 
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