and is there any way that i could minimize its “knowledge”?
In: Technology
There is a ladder of sorts when it comes to their knowledge about you,
– things they technically HAVE to know to be able to provide a service to you. Like how to physically access you and how to bill you. Typical example: they know where you live and how you prefer to pay.
– things they have to find out about you, because there are regulations and laws that stipulate certain information about you. Typical example: the IP address they give you when you connect, they have to keep that IP address in a database together with your customer ID, so that authorities can ask “on march 13th at 0945, who was at this address!?” and get a proper answer.
– things they CAN find out about you, because they see and control the information that flows to you include information about all the dns requests you make, and even if you don’t make ANY dns requests at all, they can still look at the packages you receive and make note of where they are sent from, which often makes it kind of obvious anyway. Typical example: they control the DNS that your computer uses to look up domains. When you ask their DNS how to connect to Reddit, they can totally log that information and keep it til later. And when you communicate WITH Reddit, they can make note of when and how much data you exchanged with Reddit if they want to.
If you have your email address through them, they also have constant access to your email inbox. They see your emails before you do. And they see every single email you send.
If you want to minimise their knowledge you have to
1) use a different DNS service.
2) make sure that your communication to that DNS service is encrypted
3) only use encrypted communication to all web pages you connect to, and refuse to connect to non-encrypted web services.
Keep that up, and they will still see THAT you do something, but they will pretty much be locked out of their ability to see WHAT you do.
In essence, this is why people find it so outrageous that ISP’s are forced to reveal information about you when authorities ask for that information. Because they know a lot already.
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