Question about internet privacy

[RonJohn]

My son, who is a bit of a conspiracy nut, swears this happened to him. When he first hooked up to the internet in his new apartment, he started functioning normally but after a couple of weeks, his Skype account wouldn't work. He called the internet provider, which had an account for cable and internet in the building he moved into and the technician he got read off every piece of software he had installed on his PC. Is this possible? He swears they froze his Skype account and even though he no longer lives in that building, nor uses their company, he is still locked put of his Skype account.

I guess what I am asking is can internet providers scan your PC and do they do this routinely?

[fink]

No they cannot under normal circumstances. They would have to installed some sort of remote control device or trojan on the computer to see all the programs installed. They could guess at some of the programs by observing data traffic to and from the computer because each program that accesses the internet has it's own identifiable port(s) or window(s) to do so but that would take a lot of resources that would not normally be used except under extreme circumstances.

In any case if the ISP installed anything like that on his computer it would be illegal (and unlikely since it would open them to huge lawsuits) and interfering with his Skype acc't would not only also be illegal but they'd need Skype to agree to conspire to do so and that would be an even bigger legal problem.. and I'm talking multimillion dollar class actions.

Is it possible that they just guessed at some of the more common programs that everyone has installed? But even so why would they do that? Doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

[RonJohn]

No, the programs he had installed on his PC were pretty much geared toward his supposed career as a animator, many of which I had never even heard of. The real problem is that I am thinking of switching companies and they have made me an attractive offer, but I am rather paranoid about having some internet company snooping around on my PC.

Any ideas on how he can get his Skype account back? At this point, I don't even think he can log onto his account. I know nothing about Skype, but he misses communicating with his friends where he used to live and they all use Skype.

[fink]

Can't he just set up a new Skype acc't?

Unless you're in China or some place like a former Soviet block country I personally would not be concerned about my ISP snooping around my computer.

[RonJohn]

As I said, I know nothing about Skype. I would have thought he would have tried that, but I will ask. Thanks for your help, fink.

[HAN]

Interesting read!

As for ISPs spying in the US, they absolutely monitor their networks. Everything going in and going out. (They have to, to be sure they are providing the service they promise.) But like fink notes, and IMO, unless they are under a court order, or something like an national security letter, they aren't going to spend time on any one user (unless a user really, really stands out for questionable traffic/traffic patterns.)

The biggest thing I believe some could be accused of is slowing certain traffic. I recently read somewhere that some users believe their Netflix speed was being choked down. Their "proof" was that when they compared a normal connection to Netflix to one using an https proxy (traffic that is hidden to an ISP because of the encryption), the proxy provided faster speed than the normal direct to Netflix connection. I have no idea if this is fact or not.

Some ISPs like Comcast did (do?) indeed load crap on your machine when they came to turn on service at your house. (Supposedly they used this software to provision the service!) I don't what they do now but at one time it was a bunch of Comcast branded Yahoo stuff (Toolbar, Messenger, etc.) But that said, I never felt it was spyware. Just unwanted junk.

[Train]

@HOME would try entering my lan, but my firewall stopped them every time.