Keeping yourself private on the internet.
Having read the comments in a few recent threads, it is clear to me that a large number of active users on these forums have little idea about how readily information about their activities on E-I is available to other people.
I decided that I would write something here to explain things - especially to those in this community who may not be so familiar with internet privacy issues as others.
I am not trying to scare anyone or convince you not to use this site. I am just trying to make sure that basic info is readily available to anyone in this community.
HOW CAN YOUR PRIVACY BE COMPROMISED - WHO KNOWS WHAT YOU ARE UP TO ON EI?
Clearly E-I know that you are here. If you are registered then they will have picked up on an email address and, unless you have masked it, they will have a record of your ip address. You are of course probably fairly safe from abuse by E-I though you might consider that, should they ever have a rogue employee, all manner of information might end up with wikileaks or somebody worse. Having said that, I will comment that I do rather trust Patricia to make good staffing decisions. I expect that her background means that she is rather better at it than the average employer.
Another organisation that knows what you are up to would be your internet service provider or isp. That is the organisation from which you get your internet connection. For most folks in Ireland that will be Eircom but it could be one of their competitors or a mobile phone company, or some other organisation. What do those folks know about what you are up to?
They are required by law to log all of your activity on the internet and to store that information for several years and make it available to the authorities on demand. Given the ease with which law-makers have been convinced to extend other long duration legislation, it should probably be assumed that they will required to keep the information forever. So what do they know, and should you be concerned? Well, they know exactly who you are as you are a paying customer and, unless you take steps to prevent it, they know exactly what you are up to on the internet.
As it goes through their networking equipment, they have access to absolutely everything. Unless you are using a secure connection, they can see every picture that you view and the full content of every web page that you access or every comment that you post to a forum here. That information is not kept because it would be impracticable for an isp to store it all but they do keep a record of the exact address of every web page that you access and that information, together with the fact that it was you that did it is held for several years. If I was making this post without taking precautions, my isp would know that I accessed the page to start a new topic here just minutes before this post went up and that I then accessed the link to post a new page just a few seconds before this topic was started. They would be able to identify one named customer as sharkskin and that information would be available to the authorities pretty much forever.
Now that might trouble you but it is not so bad as it seems. Just as there are data retention laws that force an isp to keep that information, there are privacy laws that would slam them about pretty hard if they were to break them. That will stop the management of your isp from sniffing around at your internet history but it might not stop one of their employees who might not care that he could lose his job and perhaps even pick up a criminal conviction. What if you are a teacher and that kid you taught last year got a job as a trainee systems-admin with your isp? It might amuse him greatly to have a look at the logs and see what his old class teacher was up to.
OTHER THINGS TO CONSIDER.
Your isp is not allowed to process their logs in such a way as to present management with a list of the names of those customers who access E-I but they can do quite a bit of other stuff. They would be allowed to calculate that 19% of customers in D2 access E-I once a month and that 12 of those customers access the private escort forums on a weekly basis. They would also be allowed to sell that information (not with any personal data) if anyone was offering cash.
Other stuff? Have you ever read a newspaper online? Did you ever register with them to leave a comment on a story or to enter a competition? If you did, they know who you are. I expect that if you did that, you registered with an email address that was rather closer to being identified as you than the address that you used on E-I. So what? Well, did you ever read a posting in this forum that included a link to a news report? We have seen a lot of such links posted of late. Again, so what? Well, what happens when you click on the link in the post in the forum and go to a story in the Irish Independent? If you ever registered with the paper for anything, they know who you are. When you registered, they left a little bit of information on your computer that is called a cookie. It tells them who you are. When you click on a link from here to their news site, they will ask your computer if it has any cookies that relate to them so they know again who you are. There is more, every time you click on a link to go from one website to another, the site that you are opening is told how you got there. So now, the newspaper of course knows that Harry Shagalot who registered with them to enter their last competition is reading a news story about the Romanian escorting court cases. They also know that he got there because he was reading the topic about it on EI. This information is not protected in the way that the log files held by your isp are. This counts as information that the newspaper is allowed to have. The editor of the newspaper is allowed to trawl though his log files to see if he can spot any registered readers who have been identified as having clicked on links in E-I to his website. If he wanted, he would be allowed to send reporters out to speak to those people or even to sell their personally identifying data to Ruhama. They could work this out even if you were using the "private browsing" feature of your web browser.
How about hotels? If you are staying in an hotel and using their internet connection then you should assume that they are monitoring everything that you do on the internet. They know it is you and they are paying attention. Why do I say this? I had the following experience: I was on a business trip and I was staying in a large five star hotel. It was rubbish and I posted a very negative review on a major hotel reservation site. Later that evening, I got a call from reception. "Hi there, how is everything? Any problems?" I declined to speak to them beyond saying that I was unhappy and then unlugged the phone. Next, they came to my room to have a chat. I declined. The next day, I went to my client's office and later returned to the hotel. My electronic access card had been disabled thus forcing me to go to reception to speak to the manager about my issues with the hotel. Of course, I should have tried to post my negative review via a stealthed internet connection but that hotel, along with others that I have used actually blocked attempts to create such a connection. If you are an escort working out of an hotel, or a punter looking for an outcall, you might like to consider this before advertising your activities to the folks on the reception desk.
OK, that is enough for now. It is a lot of information and it has taken me a week of spare moments to put it together.
I will write something about what you can do to take care about your privacy on the net but it will take me a few more days to get that together.
CLOSING REMARK.
Just to reiterate. I am not trying to scare anyone from using this site. I just want to help my fellows on here to understand some issues about internet privacy.
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Originally Posted by SR71
