Monday 6th April 2008 was the date that a new EU directive was forced upon all UK Internet Service Providers (ISP) to keep a record of all your email, internet and other online communications for the previous 12 months. This communication tracking database is enforced by the UK Government and paid for by the UK taxpayer.
ISPs now have to record and store who has sent an email to whom, and which websites their customers have visited – all with timestamps.
Bodies which are covered by phone tap law the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) will be able to request a court order for the release of the data.
They say that no content is to be recorded, only…
IP Address History: ISPs will be forced to retain data on what communications were made from which internet protocol (IP) address or phone number, what the destination of that communication was, and its duration.
Mobile phone calls: include information on which cell within a network a call was made from. This will give authorities an indication of the user’s location at the time of the call.
Web History: the addresses of web pages visited do not need to be stored under the new rules. For internet access, ISPs only need to store the dates and times of a user connecting to the internet and disconnecting; the internet protocol (IP) address allocated to the user; and the user ID of the customer.
Email Messages: sender and recipient(s) addresses and time of all messages – together with IP Address.
[Author Comment: There has been no released details as to whether the 'Subject Title' of email messages are also recorded]
The Reason For this new law: national securty and anti-terrorism measures – fair enough. But to allow local governments to ‘catch fly-tippers’. I am not a fly-tipper, and do not know anyone who has confessed verbally, so why would they start to confess online? Is there an online confession box that I do not know about? Bet you that other ‘debt-management-chasing’ companies will register to gain access to this new database to allow them to start chasing consumers with bad credit histories whom cannot be found by any other method.
All it takes is a formal request using the RIP Act to get access to these details.
