AmmoLand News Is Launching A Guide To Internet Privacy & Safety for U.S. Readers

Google logs everything you search for on their site. Even in “Incognito Mode” your searches and websites you visit are still seen by Google. Alphabet (Google’s parent company) has massive amounts of data on almost all Internet users in the country. Experts agree that they have more files on Americans than the US Government.

That isn’t even the scary part. Your ISP (internet service provider) can and does track you. There are many ways that they do this, but most of the time it is by sniffing packets. Your computer brakes down all data it sends into tiny chunks called packets. Sniffing a packet is just examining the packets to see what is in them.

When I worked for a large ISP, we would get a request from the US Government to set up monitoring of certain people or companies. We would do something called “port mirroring.” Everything a user would send and receive would also be sent by us to a second port which would feed into big brother’s database.

Search history, emails, sites visited, chats, and everything else you can think of was visible to these Government agencies. What if ISPs used this to create a profile on you to determine if you are the type of people they want on their service? Well, they already do this exact thing!

People who get caught downloading pirated movies and music do get kicked off their internet provider’s service. They find users pirating content by the methods I mentioned above, or by the content holder using multiple methods to track down who is downloading their content.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and The Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) both weld tremendous power over ISPs and the Federal Government alike when it comes to copyright issues. They are able to have ISPs take proactive action by kicking users off their platform.