What do isps monitor

They are not eavesdropping on your conversations or running surveillance teams on you around the clock. However, that does not mean they do not capture, keep, and possibly sell some of your sensitive data.

Every ISP has a set of its own privacy rules that seek to protect your sensitive data. For example, there is a good chance a marketing company could not walk into the head office of your ISP and ask for a spreadsheet with your information on it in exchange for money.

But there are still some things they do that could be considered a breach of trust and confidentiality. A particular company approaches an established company like Facebook, for example, and asks them to market their product towards a certain demographic. Once the deal is struck, Facebook uses the data they already have on their users to send the adverts to the specified demographic.

Even though you can place firewall-like protection against cookies and other forms of tracking, your ISP still knows what you are doing when you log in. Unless someone hacks into your computer to steal things like your passwords and banking data, there is a limit to just how much information your ISP can gather on you. This is because you are protected by certain privacy laws. Still, the thought of a third party secretly gathering information about your online habits before using these to place you in a certain demographic for marketing purposes is still very disturbing.

Well, this depends on a couple of factors — the IP address that is automatically assigned to you by the ISP when you take up the service and the kind of information you readily share online. In this case, the most common data that your ISP will gather, based solely on your active IP address, includes:.

What all this means is that with your web surfing, you can block ISPs from spying on you to a great extent by using as many encrypted secure connections as possible. At DuckDuckGo, we offer a tool to help you more regularly use encrypted connections when browsing the Internet. So, how do our apps and extensions help you use encrypted connections? They offer Smarter Encryption, which is a feature that automatically ensures that you use encrypted connections to websites whenever available.

We keep a list of millions of websites that offer encrypted connections, and make sure to encrypt your connections to those sites. In addition to Smarter Encryption, our apps and browser extensions include other privacy essentials like tracker blocking and private search.

Unfortunately, some websites still do not offer encrypted versions. You could also go one step further and use a technology called "Tor;" we have another guide with information on that option. In any case, you should consider using our tool or another similar tool to make sure you are using more encrypted connections when surfing the Internet. Sign In Register. Sign Out Sign In Register. Latest Insider. Check out the latest Insider stories here. More from the IDG Network. Related: Security Regulation Privacy.