Can You Trust Your ISP? Are There ISPs a Threat to Privacy?

A judge in Ontario just ruled some time ago that “there can be no reasonable expectation of privacy online” while dealing with a case allowing police officers to obtain an individual’s name, address and other details from the IP addresses alone WITHOUT a search warrant. This means clearly we have no privacy while browsing the internet. Can you trust your ISP?

Are there ISPs a threat to privacy?

ISPs can be the gateway towards zero online privacy. Your ISP has complete access to everything you send or receive online. According to Paul Ohms, Law School Prof in Colorado, “ISPs pose a much greater threat to privacy than other online entities and they even pose a greater threat than offline institutions as well, including doctors, psychiatrists, and lawyers.”

And there are two factors contributing to this: deep packet inspection technology and methods and increasing pressure from the companies and online marketers.

Can I Hide My IP Address From ISP?

“Can I hide my IP address from my ISP (Internet Service Provider)?”.

First of all, why would you be interested in doing this? ISP usually logs your online activities and can even ban or warn you if you perform certain activities (e.g. download copyrighted movies from torrents).

Can you hide your IP from ISP?

So, can you hide your IP from ISP? The answer is: NO. You can not hide from your ISP because they are the ones who assign the IPs.

What can you do?

What you can do is to ensure you are not monitored or tracked when using the internet. You can hide your web browsing habits (e.g. visiting torrent sites) from your ISP by using Tor, but you can not hide IP from ISP.

Tor encrypts the web traffic before sending it out. The connection to any website goes from your computer through several computers using Tor. Eventually it the web traffic is decrypted and sent to the website. The response from the website follows the same path and it is decrypted when it reaches your computer. The website you are accessing does not know who you are or your IP address and your ISP will not know what you are viewing.

VPN services – A good alternative

If you are serious about your security and privacy while browsing the Web you need know about VPN services. They provide encrypted tunnel between your devices and the VPN server. Thus, they hide your activity from your ISP. However, they do not hide IP from ISP.

Conclusion

To sum up, you can not hide IP from ISP but you can take measures (for example, by using Tor) to be sure that they do not log your online activities. If you need to change your IP you should also read: 7 Ways To Change Your IP Address.