Jay Shah

Asked a Quora question too, but have received no answers. My friend is afraid of asking all this himself, so I am doing it in their behalf.

Well, some passerby has answered it casually right now, but it is simply a casual one.

Yes ThoriumBR ISPs can't store that much data (as you previously said), and yes @pcalkins, I was talking about such a data storage center you describe. But apart from ISPs and such data centers, does GOOGLE store data that associates browsing activity with the IP address that was assigned at the time to a device? If I see a video on Vimeo (using Chrome browser and Google search engine), will Google have a record of which IP address saw which video on Vimeo?

@Jack Thank you for your opinion:)

@pcalkins Thank you for the example, and thank you ThoriumBR for commenting. One user in my other related question mentions "...government agencies often have interfaces to the ISP or to internet exchanges which allows them to copy selected traffic to their own systems.". --- What sort of traffic would govt agencies (law enforcement) be interested in selecting to copy to the interface? Can it include Homosexual material?

@ThoriumBR So there is no chance Indonesian Govt can ask ISPs to find out who watched a homosexual video on a particular https website because ISPs simply don't keep encrypted browsing histories of people. Is this rightly stated?

@ThoriumBR I value that you spend your time answering my follow-up questions:) Thanks. May I please ask for a last opinion of yours? Islamic countries are strictly against homosexual content. One of my homosexual friends ranted about their "unlucky" birth in Indonesia. It's very strict, you know. How about the Government ordering ISPs to find out what videos were being watched by citizens, using this method? How about investigating citizens activities on homosexual websites? How about citizens activity on anti-Islamic websites? They really want to catch these people. Your say on this proposal?

I am essentially asking about the feasibility, nothing else. I have some concerned Muslim friends who are so worried on this that one day some Government official would come to their residence with evidence of their activity obtained from ISP (by the research paper method) to arrest them.

There is a second question, is there any chance ISPs eventually dispose off encrypted data? Like after 6 months or 1 year? Why would they really store encrypted data? If they do not keep encrypted data for much time, it would be a big sigh of relief for my Muslim friends. Thank you for your help.

@ThoriumBR But the answerers clearly site 3-4 research papers where it was shown how researchers accurately predicted which movie on Netflix was being watched. Netflix is a BIG site. How did they do that?

@ThoriumBR But this question's answerers clearly say that virtually it is absolutely possible for ISPs to determine which video one sees. Both answerers agree that it is almost 100% possible to accurately predict what video was seen. What do you want to say about it?

@ThoriumBR What is that link?

@EsaJokinen ...... but let's face it: they are not quite practical for watching videos on YouTube or PornHub." What do you mean by this? They are not practical for the ISP to find out the actual content, is this right?

@EsaJokinen I can see Google thinks I live in city A, whereas I actually live in a neighboring city B. Is this the "precise location" you are talking about? Your coordination will be greatly appreciated. Thanks

*"... (and a lot you don't, but are referenced on the pages you view: images, scripts, things like that). That's why some people tell you to use a VPN to protect your privacy against your ISP. But using DNS-over-TLS or DNS-over-HTTPS is enough." Can you please explain the DNS thing to me in layman terms, if it is possible? Does having DNS over HTTPS hide the website I visit from my ISP. Is that what you mean? Thanks for your answer!