Announce: "secret-admirers" mail list(usenet)

[Raymond D. Mereniuk]

> At 11:24 AM 12/16/2000 -0800, Eric Murray wrote:
>  > > > Only by running your own mail or news server can you prevent the
>  > > > ISP from monitoring your email or news reading.

Sorry to entering this thread so late but I had to bite on these 
comments.  I have been in and out of the ISP business for the last 5 
years.  In my last real job I was responsible for a tech support team.  
Tech support personnel in ISPs are typically an entry level position 
with only slightly better starting wages.  I couldn't get most of the 
techs to read what I wanted them to read and I would be surprised if 
any of them did any snooping.

You spend most of the time on the phone with 12 O'clock flashers, 
people who live with every appliance in their house flashing 12:00.  
A lot of calls are from Outlook Express users who receive a 2 MB 
graphics file and are pissed off when they can't download it in 30 
seconds with their 33.6 kbps modem.  Outlook Express doesn't 
give you any progress indication.  They call and want you to read 
their mail to them over the phone.  A few calls like this you just don't 
ever want to look at anyone's mail any more.

News servers don't tend to keep logs, you look at a newsgroup and 
there are 3000 messages in the group, that would be 3000 lines in 
a log file.  We would turn that one off real fast.

Mailservers...??  Ever looked at a "messages" log on a Sendmail 
server?  Even with GREP there ain't no way to get useful 
information there.  The log files are probably on a 5-week rotation 
so after 5 weeks their gone.

Dialup access logs tend to be kept so we can pursue the hackin 
bastards plus some ISPs use them for billing.  Sorry, no love lost for 
hackers after you have called a few and attempted to talk to them.  
Everyone is in denial, " I didn't do that".

Web access logs are usually kept for a while but without a stats 
package they are mostly gibberish.  I would bet most hosting 
companies don't keep logs unless the customer pays extra for a 
stats package.

I wouldn't worry about most ISP invading your privacy.  Most of them 
are too busy getting calls from 12:00 O'clock flashers and, my 
personal favourite, the caller who blamed us for uploading porn 
onto their computer.  





Raymond D. Mereniuk
Raymond at fbn.bc.ca
History of a Telco, A Fairy Tale
http://www.fbn.bc.ca/telcohis.html