BleepingComputer.com: Bizarre Question - Isp Invasion And Monitoring!

First, let me say that I'm living in a country with strick cen***ship laws...somewhere in As*a.

The Gove**ment has provided all ISPs with a very long list of banned websites and this is implimented by means of context scanning of the URLs.

BUT - recently, I sent a long e-mail to my wife abroad, and it contained some friendly conversational swear-words - and I received a pro-forma reply from my ISP that this message had been quarantined as it contained "sensitive material."

My concern is this. Is it possible for my (State Sponsored) ISP to somehow "invade" my computer? Scan its contents? Or to monitor my internet activities?

The recently installed Zone Labs Pro is constantly listing blockings of ICMP ytpe 11 and type 8 from what appears to be DNS variations of my ISP. I know next to nothing about this, but have read enough on the Net to become a bit concerned.

Is there any way that I can find out what (if anything!) my ISP is up to and then try to prevent it?

Help!

Rob

Everything you send or receive has to go through your ISP so there's no need for your government to scan your PC. They just need to monitor what passes through your ISP's servers.

Even those of us in the more liberal-minded countries have little or no control over what our ISP is revealing to our Goverment on a daily basis, it's even enshrined in law here in the UK in the interests of protecting the nation from terrorist activity, paedophiles etc. To that end they have my full support, but where should the line be drawn if all most of want is privacy within the bounds of legal activity?
The only way these days to prevent ISP's or governments from censoring what you send or receive or store on your PC is never to use the internet in the first place, which, of course, amounts to voluntary self-censorship anyway.

What you may want to try is TOR. Tor aims to defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal anonymity and privacy, confidential business activities ...

It's FREE, and you can get it here:
http://tor.eff.org/

Along with using that, you may want to use PeerGuardian 2 It's also FREE.. PeerGuardian 2 is an ip blocking tool that prevents ip's and web sites from connecting to your computer, which will make your online surfing more private and secure. You can get it here: http://methlabs.org

My next suggestion to you would be to compile a list of censored words in NotePad or something, along with the code words, and pass that on to who you email. That way you can continue using your email, but instead of using the actual censored words, you'll just use your code words. As long as you and the other people stick to the list of words, you should be able to send emails in the content form you want, without it being intercepted and quarantined.

Just be cautious, because since they intercepted your email, you are definitely on their radar screen. The list you want the others to have should be postal mailed to them. Do not attempt to send it through email.

Ever since 9-11-2001, everyone on planet earth has become suspects of illegal activities. I don't know about any of you, but I have a problem with my emails being intercepted.

On an ending note: I remember this great sentence. "For every problem, there are at least 10 different solutions to them."

[EDIT = Added Info]
I just thought about this. You must be using your isp's email address they assigned to you. If you are. STOP using it now. There are plenty of FREE email accounts out there for you. NEVER-EVER, use an email account your isp gives you, and I mean NEVER.

Thanks for your reply, Walkman. But I'm running Zone Alarn Pro - which seems to do exactly the same as the two programs you mentioned (the link to TOR doesn't work, by the way.)

This is how I know that my computer is being sent UDC and ICMP packets from my ISP. My big problem is that I simply don't know enough to know if this is a 'normal' thing that happens naturally when everyone connects to the Net, or if this is something more sinister. From what I've read on the net, ICMP type 8 and type 11 are agteways(?) that can be used to gain access to my computer in some way.

Any ideas?

Cheers

Rob

The links work. I just click on the links, and they go to where they're suppose to.

Zone Alarm is good to an extent. You may need to disable it to go to that link I posted. Although similar, do you use PeerGuardian 2? If not, even with Zone Alarm, PG2 will help protect you more.

Also, you never replied if you use the email address your isp assigned to you. You don't have to use theirs. Get your own FREE email account.

Technically, by using a FREE email account, you'll eliminate 100% of your isp intercepting your emails. Like I said earlier.. the only way your isp is intercepting your emails is that you're using the email address they assigned to you. Stop using it.