Re: Is it possible for the ISPs or the server to trace some one out?

Hi Asif,

This question can get pretty complicated but I think you're probably looking for a more general answer so I'll address it in that manner. Technically speaking, *everything* you do on the Net is totally traceable. The ISP that you go through when you dial-up from home (or connect via cable modem or DSL) logs everything that everyone does using their networks. So, under ordinary circumstances, just about everything is traceable by them.

And this is exactly what happens when someone engages in nefarious activities and the FBI becomes involved. They get a subponea from the courts to gain access to the ISP's logs (and any intermediary's logs, if necessary) and trace out exactly who did what. As you can well imagine, this is a very complicated and time-consuming job so normally they would only undertake such measures if the matter was serious (e.g., passing viruses, making threats, defamation, illegal content, etc.). Now, although this is how things usually work, there are numerous workarounds to protect your privacy.

You can avail yourself of proxy servers (e.g., Yahoo's Proxies Page lists many such free and fee-based proxies). These computers route all of your requests through an intermediary server, the proxy server. So now the only IP's that are recorded on the recipients side are the proxy's IP's. But even here there is a caveat: some proxies have a header (the IP forwarded environment variable) which sometimes contains the originating IP that requested the proxy service (in this case, your IP). To test if your proxy masks this information, you can check out All NetTools' proxy server checker. But, even if they do mask your IP, the FBI can certainly still get access to their logs, too (as long as they keep these logs, that is).

Yet another strategem employed by many is to use so-called anonymous proxies. The most popular among these is Anonymizer.Com which provides both free and fee-based proxying. These are a burgeoning business on a Web that's increasing becoming worried about its privacy. In addition to such solutions, there are new proposals like freenet, freedom, and others which try to make certain exchanges completely untraceable. These work at the more fundamental level of the packets themselves.

At heart, any Internet exchange is packet-based since the Net is built on the packet-switching technology of the TCP/IP suite of protocols. This offers an additional way for the savvy computer expert (read: computer geek :) to disguise his identity on the Net (the whole Net as opposed to just the Web). Some of the approaches used here are proposals similar too freenet or freedom but other, more illegal, approaches are also used as frequently. So-called IP-spoofing is one way to disguise your packets so they seem to be coming from somewhere else. I don't think it behooves this discussion for me to elaborate on these too much here (besides which, I think this is probably straying from the intent of your question). If you are interested in more information on these aspects, you can avail yourself of many, many resources on the Web like alt2600.com, 9mm.com, Yahoo'sSpoofing Page, etc.

But getting back to your original point about ISP's, to find out more about the kind of information ISP's specifically log about you, check out the Internet-Handbooks site about ISP privacy and this paper. In addition, running a few searches on Yahoo will return TONS of hits (don't forget to go to their WebPage Matches which uses the excellent Google search engine). There are literally books written on this topic which I've just barely begun to scratch the surface of.

In addition to the technical aspects, there are obviously sociological and legal factors that must be taken into account so I encourage you to go to your local library and ask the librarian to point you in the right direction. Of course, if you're really concerned about your activities on the Net, I feel I should point out that it would be in your best interest to fully explore the legal aspects of whatever you might be concerned about. Not just the local laws, but also the national and international laws (the universal nature of the Internet brings both local and global consequences). Although I am a proponent of protecting privacy on the Internet in principle to allow for complete individual freedom, it becomes tricky when people start abusing this freedom by harming or denying others. In such cases, the traceability of any one transaction affords the best weapon in tracking down cyber criminals. And so, just like in real life, if you're not going to do anything dumb, go ahead and use one of the above masking techniques; but if you might be engaging in something that's harmful to others, be aware that just about everything is, in theory, totally traceable. If something seems confusing, or outright wrong, in my answer please feel free to drop me a line at rickys@sethi.org and I'd be more than happy to discuss this further.

Best regards,


Rick.