Guess who can NOW view your browsing history?

Hoseman

I heard about this the other day. Its pretty worrying that they have access to this data but the worst aspect for me is if this info gets hacked and splashed all over the web.

The list is almost laughable on the bodies that can access your info: https://yiu.co.uk/blog/who-can-view-my-internet-history/

Possible solutions are VPNS. Thoughts please...

EDIT:

Sorry I didnt see the other thread on VPNs that is related to this. Delete this one?

AndyPix

Just shocking ..
How can anyone justify "Food standards scotland" having complete access to my browsing history


That beggars belief

John_Gray

Phew! From the headline I thought the answer might be Apple!

SailorSam

How much extra staff are all those people going to need, to watch what we're all doing. Especially when most people are only looking for a recipe for their tea; the football results, or what's on Tv.

Head_The_Ball

I've just checked and the Missus isn't on the list so it doesn't worry me.

Strider590

Tap off your BB modem, run one connection to your network and share the other as an open guest WiFi with an extremely limited bandwidth.

If potentially everyone has access to your internet, then nobody can point fingers at you for whatever traffic has gone via your connection. Especially if they can't prove you know anything about IT/networking.

Plausible deniability..........


I just use VPN for almost everything I do.


Ultimately this is what all the fearmongering has amounted to and the demonising of internet freedom groups as being criminals/hackers, all ad-hominem with the goal of discrediting them in the eyes of the general public.

The worst thing by far is that "dodgy" people will move up a notch, they'll know how to hide and so the only people this affects is the average joe.

[Deleted User]

Thousands of teenage boys saw the Title and ran off to delete their history in case the answer was their Mum :eek:

Everyone else uses a VPN.

forgotmyname

treboeth wrote: »

Thousands of teenage boys saw the Title and ran off to delete their history in case the answer was their Mum :eek:

Everyone else uses a VPN.

Or someone had a call from a MUM who was worried her kids may see her browser history and wanted to keep it safe/hidden/empty

They are welcome to snoop on my youtube history, hours and hours of endless drivel.

ARandomMiser

Quite honestly if you are that paranoid then stop using the web - nobody will see your browsing history then - the choice is yours.

At the same time give up your mobile phone since various bodies can track you within a few feet.

esuhl

ARandomMiser wrote: »

Quite honestly if you are that paranoid then stop using the web - nobody will see your browsing history then - the choice is yours.

At the same time give up your mobile phone since various bodies can track you within a few feet.

If the idea of privacy horrifies you, then install CCTV in every room of your house and stream them all over the web 24/7. The choice is yours.

Code

Yes, almost unpublicized, the UK became one of the most surveilled nations last week.

First thing is that the new (R)IPA doesn't allow these agencies to view your entire browsing history - it only mandates that your ISP record the domain you visit and the metadata about your visit (time etc). So you will be recorded as visiting "forums.moneysavingexpert.com", but not "...expert.com/showthread.php?t=123456".

So the question to ask yourself is, how concerned are you about that information? Without the complete URL there is no (current) risk of extracting more personal or direct details from parameters. I also doubt the Govt will ever mandate the full URL be proactively retained for every citizen, because of the potentially massive PII and confidentiality problems that could cause.

Basically that info is an invasion of privacy, but in itself it's not really going to disclose much unless you're already doing something illegal. Bearing in mind it's used "historically" (i.e.: security services identify a person of interest, and go back to see what domains they've accessed for the last year), it's only really useful to confirm something that's already known - for example, security services have a warrant to tap full browsing history from "today", they can see the target goes to dodgydomain.com/fullurl to exchange illegal info, and they can go back to see how long they've been visiting dodgydomain.com.

As noted above, the larger issue is that ISPs and phone providers (for call metadata) will have to retain the domain history for everyone, for a year. And as we've seen, these companies are far too vulnerable to being hacked.

So again, let's assume an ISP is following bad practice and an attacker manages to get the database of domains accessed, and a way to cross-reference that to actual customers. Would that data in itself be a risk for you?

For me, for example, it will pretty much show I read BBC news, come to this site, use online banking and a few other things. I'm not that bothered about that - my Chrome bookmarks disclose more, and I sync those to the cloud.

So I'm pretty disgusted by this stupid, badly-reasoned and utterly useless Act, but it doesn't make any actual difference to me.

If I did want to do anything that wasn't recorded, I'd simply use one of the major VPN services. Either I'd install a Chrome extension to cover my web browsing, or use a full VPN service for any network connectivity.

It's important to check that the VPN provider is legit and does not log or store any info, because (for those of you not familiar with VPNs) they effectively become your router and all your network traffic passes through their systems. They have the exact "visibility" restrictions as your ISP though, so for example they can't see inside HTTPS to get at your online banking (there are some v technical exceptions to this, if you end up with a dodgy VPN provider).

I think there was someone in the other thread who "rolled their own VPN". That isn't a great idea, because - assuming he really has bought a hosted server and installed a VPN terminator - all the traffic from that IP will obviously be his. The fact that a VPN is a concentrator provides some of the anonymity. It also means he's forced to terminate his VPN in the country he's bought the host in. Most quality VPN providers have exit points in multiple countries, which is useful for a number of reasons.

Anyway, in a single stroke the UK govt has basically placed every citizen under surveillance, except for those with a little bit of tech knowledge. And I think we can safely assume that every "person of interest" will be well aware of this change to the law, and use a VPN to avoid it.

Incidentally the best thing about this law is that all the people who have now decided they're going to use a VPN to avoid it will also avoid the High Court Injunction on the torrent and other sites that's in place for UK ISPs. Hilarious.