Internet anonymity

[Porter]

Yes ISPs collect logs. They also do not release them to anyone, not even LE without a court order. In fact one site, Torrentspy, was actually ordered by the court to begin keeping such logs and to turn them over to investigators and chose to shut down instead of doing so. Any ISP found to be doing so would be in breech of Canadian Internet privacy laws. In cases of child porn, any ISP will cooperate with LE without any court order or warrant. YVO, I would like you to show me one case of an ISP disclosing their user log information to anyone without a court order.

The problem is that they do! And not just to LE. The amount of data warehousing that is being collected is phenomenal! Its a marketing all you can eat buffet.

The only advantage is that all this information is not correlated into centralized DB's. Google does correlate its information , with Reveneu, etc etc.

Though some LE agencies do get multiple sources from ISP, Financial, Gov agencies, they correlate this info into a patterns and profiles, based on chaos engines, from these patterns they get trends and baselines. But they also can isolate any individual and trace his/her movements based on the source.

 

[Porter]

If I connect from a hotel room, then I'm using the hotel's IP address, even if I'm using my own laptop. Likewise from an Internet café or a public library, or any public wifi hotspot for that matter. As far as I know, servers on which my browser can hit do NOT record my MAC address, or any other data that could allow someone to match a hit on a server with my specific machine.

You misunderstand! Trace is not done only via IP, but also through multiple sources.
So you connect from the Hotel, using the same email addy ?? Connecting to this board with your creds?? The authentication process can also be traced from multiple IP's

I connect through bell via a DSL link, guess what my modem authenticates itself with mt credentials and tags the IP for that session, see you now know everything I did on the net!

No, we have handed over our last hope of privacy with the useInternet and cell phones.

 

[BoitePerdue]

As far as I know, servers on which my browser can hit do NOT record my MAC address, or any other data that could allow someone to match a hit on a server with my specific machine.

At the very least, the hotel's DHCP server may have a record of your MAC address that could link the data sent through their IP to you, if an investigation were to get that serious. It does seem unlikely though. For extra anonymity, you can always get a PCMCIA network card to use solely when you are "away from home".

 

[Fred Zed]

See the interview of Spokeo founder and comments at http://www.crunchbase.com/company/spokeo-people-search

Anyone who has a website or server needs monitoring.

http://www2.precise-itc.com/
http://monitor.precise-itc.com/en/reseller.php

I think Spokeo simply refines searches that you can run for yourself from Google.
The other links you posted have nothing to do with internet anonymity.
They are Web Monitoring Services - they are designed to notify a web site owner immediately when their site is running slow or when it is down.