Massmailers

Samer wrotedoes VISP has a clear "zero tolerance for spam" policy?

There is no absolute chance that someone can spam. If i know that he spam for purprose, and he will tell him he paid for that, i will kick him out in few seconds and return money for his account from my pocket even.
Just i am thinking, what kind of punishment must be approved. It is not end-user, it is SOHO, but i will disconnect any customer, even biggest one, if he will say "i will spam for purprose".

Most of the cases - i will not notice even, because i am not doing preventive traffic scan for such things. But if i will get abuse/complaint - i will take small investigation action. If i will have logs, or source can prove that his information is true(which is very difficult, except it is FBI/lebanese police/...) - i will block account. Also complaint to be taken seriously have to be signed by lebanese notary, if it is from company/person, not from government officials. Cause there is very high chance of fake complaints.

In cases 1,2,3,5 - i will take preventive action(blocking account or ports), if my short investigation will show it is true and case is serious. In case 2 additionally we will report local police department immediately, if i see it is true.
Case 1 - can be just stupid kid, it is bad to do something serious for him(if actions what he did, not so serious), just i will ask reseller, next time when this kid will go to pay for internet, to tell him, that it is bad, and he/his parents can face problems from police.

In case 4 = I will take investigation, and if complaint done in official way and it is proven there that complainer is copyright owner, i will ask customer to remove illegal content. If he will not do that in some acceptable terms - i will block his accounts.

One time RIAA-like company tried to ask us about information about one of customers. I found some fake records(wrong ip's, time when they are saying customer shared movies - his connection was off) in their complaint, and told them that i i will report to FBI, that they are trying to blackmail us(they wrote very ugly and scary email, that how it is dangerous for our company to not give information about this guy), they disappeared.

Another case, some customers get angry because we dont give them cheaper price/free internet, coz they are super-puper hackers, and we must be scared from them. I heard such talks from reseller, that some idiot want free internet, cause he c00lhax0r, and he will stop him, then we had very serious DDoS for almost 1 week. We can block it, but it can cause few minutes downtime per day, if IDS works not enough fast. Finally i postpone all my work, and spent few hours tracking idiot. Well... i go behind law, he got very painful lesson. It is not a joke, serious DDoS, next he will start robbing and killing people without understanding responsibility, how bad things he is doing.

mir wroteThe good point in what you said is that you mentioned official complaints.. stuff signed from notary.. request from police !

I think anyone serious about doing illegal stuff, would at least have encryption on

I think scanning the traffic is like listening to all the ppls phone calls on ur network
Do you need papers or reasons to do a preventive scanning ?
i think the amount of data would be huge.. i am sure u ain't gonna read it all :P
i am just curious.. what kind of software is used to analyze the output

I think ISPs .. specially in the future will have more power and control .. it will be like power and Key companies in the country
and i think there are some privacy issues in here that can be discussed.. but i am not going off-topic
cuz that is completely another discussion !

mir - i will search for pattern specified by complainer. Let's say he will say customer share "XXyo_porno.jpg" or shell code patterns, there is tools to catch this.
So i will not see all customer traffic, but ISP have right to scan it for highly illegal content by software in case of complaint, which will not store his traffic, in case he didn't match suspicious patterns.
And for example, telephone compaines before was listening to phone call, if it is not dropped long time, to check - maybe customer forgot to close phone or it is his phone malfunction. My idea, that ISP can make pattern based software to catch illegal activity, like snort software, if for example in customer bandwidth appear too much phrases "(kid|child)\s*(sex|porno)", which will give him alert on such activity, and possible store traffic for this period. Also ISP have right to store always customer information like: HTTP access.logs (URL's), netflow/sflow data, and sure connect/disconnect time and traffic. Thats it, nothing more.

About encryption... well, even criminals doing mistakes. And if he run encryption, he will have some end-point host. This means complainer will call end-point host or he can ask me, that if customer connected to this end-point, but i wouldn't answer, if he dont run anything suspicious and i cannot catch "illegal" patterns. I will answer on such case ONLY to government officials and ONLY when i will have official paper.

But preventive scanning MUST happen, if there is complaint. If it is case of selling drugs, illegal pornography and etc - maybe it will save someone life or future. Each of us cannot judge someone on street and hang him, if just people talk - he is selling drugs. But if someone tell you, your neighbour abusing child, and you will not knock in his door, when abuser tell it happen, to see if it is like this? And you will not prevent him to do this again? Police is slow sometimes, and people must help one each other sometimes in such cases.

If it was fake complaint, this can be case for police too, maybe... not sure, i have to ask lawyers.

mir wrote

Also ISP have right to store always customer information like: HTTP access.logs (URL's), netflow/sflow data, and sure connect/disconnect time and traffic. Thats it, nothing more.

Oh ! that is all .. that is a lot :O:
for how long VISP keeps those records
do u have terms of use or agreement when someone buys an account
can i have the link to read it ?

The thing is that on the internet it is much easier for ISP to invade ur privacy than with PhoneCompany cuz recognitions softwares for voice and taping and stuff.. will take lot of ressources. and so hard to do. but with the ISP.. much much easy

I don't have any personal problem.. but i am thinking of this as privacy and ethical stuff
and i am not only wondering about VISP
i doubt what other lebanese ISP might be doing ! or what they can do
i will post detailed questions later..maybe in another topic cuz i find that is very intresting

Logs is kept according lebanese laws, how much - it is set my management. And all ISP's have to do that. Before i was not keeping them, but it is required now.
For me - better to not keep anything, because we had to invest a lot money, because logs eating a lot performance.