Reply to: HMRC can now view your internet history

[flamel]

Not a problem ... just use the TOR browser instead.

TAILS on a USB stick is even better
https://tails.boum.org/

[richardtaylor]

Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs is a non-ministerial department of the UK Government responsible for the collection of taxes, the payment of some forms of state support, and the administration of other regulatory regimes including the national minimum wage.

HMRC Will authorise by the uk Goverment to Receive some data of Taxpayers' personal data, including records of web sites they have ... to intercept and read peoples' private emails, or listen to their phone calls if they found some fraud with him

[Nayab]

I'd only worry if I'd done something that had warranted me being on a watch list.

[darrylmg]

Your name is probably typed in by a human. IPs are assigned by a computer in response to a login so it's pretty trivial to log that. If they don't, or haven't up to now, or if Nigel the trainee accidentally deleted the logs last week doesn't mean that they can't.

That's possible, but the broadband was signed up for online, like most things. Nobody should have been typing anything.
System upgrade issue maybe. In which case, the same result could happen to whatever system stores the IP to address records.

[DaveB]

They can now also lie in court about how they got the information.

Section 56 of the act as passed sets out a number of matters that are now prohibited from being brought up in court. The exact wording of section 56(1) is as follows:

Exclusion of matters from legal proceedings etc.
(1) No evidence may be adduced, question asked, assertion or disclosure made or other thing done in, for the purposes of or in connection with any legal proceedings or Inquiries Act proceedings which (in any manner)—

(a) discloses, in circumstances from which its origin in interception-related conduct may be inferred—

(i) any content of an intercepted communication, or

(ii) any secondary data obtained from a communication, or

(b) tends to suggest that any interception-related conduct has or may have occurred or may be going to occur.

This is subject to Schedule 3 (exceptions).

This creates an obligation on the prosecution to actively lie about how evidence was obtained should it have involved any form of interception. Simply refusing to provide details isn't good enough since that could infer that interception had been used, which you can't now do.

And you as the accused have to go along with this since it is illegal under the act to question the evidence given where that questioning may infer or confirm that interception took place.

And in case you were wondering just who is now allowed to exercise the powers of the act, here is the definitive list. Including Food Hygiene Inspectors.

Investigatory Powers Act 2016

[VectraMan]

That's not my point.
My point is that these big companies can't even hold basic details without corrupting them somehow.
My wife's firstname has been mangled with EE.
My name now also has my firstname first letter twice at the beginning of my name.
What's to stop them incorrectly assigning me as the previous owner of an IP address by mistake. Lack of basic controls and change management somewhere.

Your name is probably typed in by a human. IPs are assigned by a computer in response to a login so it's pretty trivial to log that. If they don't, or haven't up to now, or if Nigel the trainee accidentally deleted the logs last week doesn't mean that they can't.

[Contreras]

That's not my point.
My point is that these big companies can't even hold basic details without corrupting them somehow.
My wife's firstname has been mangled with EE.
My name now also has my firstname first letter twice at the beginning of my name.
What's to stop them incorrectly assigning me as the previous owner of an IP address by mistake. Lack of basic controls and change management somewhere.

Good point well made. The answer, theoretically, is that if required by law then they will need to get their tulip together.

[darrylmg]

That's the easy part. Big providers already know who had which IP and when. That is already evidence that can be used.

That's not my point.
My point is that these big companies can't even hold basic details without corrupting them somehow.
My wife's firstname has been mangled with EE.
My name now also has my firstname first letter twice at the beginning of my name.
What's to stop them incorrectly assigning me as the previous owner of an IP address by mistake. Lack of basic controls and change management somewhere.

[VectraMan]

Not quite, as evident by all the copyright infringement scams debacle. AFAIK ISPs can't reliably prove that your account/household used a particular IP at a specific time.

Presumably part of this is to make ISPs log that too otherwise it would be extra dumb. I have a static IP so I'm screwed.

You can't control whether switching off your router will give you a different IP, and you also can't control whether the ISP is properly logging who is using which IP. Even with a VPN you can't control whether the VPN provider is logging who is using which virtual-IP; they might say that they don't but how can you know?

Anonymity on the internet is a myth and always has been.

[SneakySimon]

IP Address

Learning lots on here - never knew about the switching on / off of the router could change your IP address......

When I lived in the USA, I used a software that changed my IP address to a UK address so I could gamble (UK Gambling sites block you) - I am guessing that was just as mask?

[SueEllen]

Not if you reboot your router several times a day. Make sure you get a new IP address each time, obviously. The only people sharp enough to do that are IT contractors and terrorists, precisely the folk these laws are designed to catch. Which makes it just about the most pointless law ever. Soon it will become a criminal offence to turn your router off (or suffer a power cut) in which case my parents will be off to chokey, they always turn theirs off when they are not using it, indeed they turn everything off when they're not using it, which probably saves them a few quid a year in electricity. Anyway, it's virtually unworkable. They'll be running around tracing billions of records, and eventually they'll all give up. The smaller ISPs will go bust (they won't be able to maintain the records) and the bigger ISPs will tell the govt to get stuffed.

I only learnt to do that because some US based forum blocked me about 15 years ago.

I had to explain to them that IP addresses in the UK weren't fixed and all people did was reboot their routers one or more times to get assigned a new one.

Oh and 15 year old boys who like to hack from their bedroom also know this trick even if they prefer to use next door's WiFi.

[Mordac]

Not quite, as evident by all the copyright infringement scams debacle. AFAIK ISPs can't reliably prove that your account/household used a particular IP at a specific time.

Not if you reboot your router several times a day. Make sure you get a new IP address each time, obviously. The only people sharp enough to do that are IT contractors and terrorists, precisely the folk these laws are designed to catch. Which makes it just about the most pointless law ever. Soon it will become a criminal offence to turn your router off (or suffer a power cut) in which case my parents will be off to chokey, they always turn theirs off when they are not using it, indeed they turn everything off when they're not using it, which probably saves them a few quid a year in electricity. Anyway, it's virtually unworkable. They'll be running around tracing billions of records, and eventually they'll all give up. The smaller ISPs will go bust (they won't be able to maintain the records) and the bigger ISPs will tell the govt to get stuffed.

[sal]

That's the easy part. Big providers already know who had which IP and when. That is already evidence that can be used.

Not quite, as evident by all the copyright infringement scams debacle. AFAIK ISPs can't reliably prove that your account/household used a particular IP at a specific time.

[DaveB]

Starbucks use BT, so I would assume they will already have it covered.

I would imagine the days of free wifi will continue, but you will have to provide an email address or the like to confirm before be allowed to access any content

and they will quietly collect enough info about the device you use to link it to the activity recorded. OS / Browser / MAC etc.

[djf]

Not a problem ... just use the TOR browser instead.