Wire tap?

Is a wire tap something the consumer needs to worry about, or purely a myth? (If the former which would be the best ISP?)

This is what you require.

If you really are worried the CIA might care about what you are ordering from your preferred supermarket then TOR (The Onion Router) is probably the best idea

Either that or the tin foil hat already suggested.

I'm a Tor refugee (you don't meet many of those do you unusual screen res. - exit nodes always get me - and those rogue nodes are currently running at 50% from what I hear[1]).

No, I am not worried about the CIA, MI5, etc., I'm a bog standard domestic Internet user. It's the neighbourhood thief I am worried about.

Can I have a sensible reply please guys.

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[1] Though having said that LPS http://www.spi.dod.mil/lipose.htm forces the screen res. to SVGA no matter what your screen actually is - the dist. from what I can gather was only ever intended for US air force staff to do their online banking etc., it would be OK for that.

I have never heard of a neighbourhood thief tapping an ordinary users fixed line in this country.

You would need to climb the pole or open a cab up and get the right pair which would need inside knowledge. Much easier to watch when you go out then pretend to clean the windows and break in.

Mobiles are much easier to tap, a la N.O.W.

I can vaguely remember a BT engineer getting sacked for listening to converstations years ago, now they get sacked for metal theft.

Most of the things they would be interested in via BB should be over HTTPS and encrypted, it appears much easier to steal these remotely by spam, trojans, keyloggers and staright forward naivety and much less risky than doing anything in the neighbourhood.

There is a small risk if your router is not secured of picking things up via wireless, but with all the usual security active your risk is below that you need to worry about.

Dagnabbit! I have a cracked lip and that post made it worse.

Tor?

Glad to be of (lip?) service.

You're right I think in that a thief will much prefer to hack a computer by getting direct access to the keyboard (my experience would back that up).

I wouldn't though underestimate the skill of local crime (especially in urban areas). (Not sure what N.O.W. is - googling returns every page with the word now in it - would be interested to know more - I've contemplated a mobile data package I must admit because they are getting less expensive and I assumed it might be more secure.)

Someone on twitter suggested that every website should be HTTPS (which would prevent code injection), however as another twitterer pointed out this still leaves the destination IP of a packet in clear text. I would prefer it myself if it wasn't even possible to know whether I was surfing the web at a particular time or not (and the only way to do that at present is to random surf when not using the computer). There is the issue of anonymity as well, It really would be preferable if I had the choice of letting a website have geographic data for myself.

Wireless should be OK, and I do use an encrypted VPN - but even with the VPN you have to be able to make sure that not even so much as a single unencrypted DNS request goes out before making the connection to the gateway (people do not usually use DNSCrypt servers), or your connection is tainted. A firewall can be pretty tight at that point also. The problem is though that, a) domestic computers are not set up for this at all (although they can be set up this secure - it takes a corporate IT dept. to configure a computer in this way, and most people are not going to be able to afford the MS certified engineers, etc.!), and b) even if the latter is in place, then can not the broadband connection be broken, slowed down, stopped and started? The IP of the VPN server will be known to the hackers also (not ideal).

I think possibly maybe then I am looking for statistics on crime related to cable cabs (or poles - my cable goes straight into a flower bed, etc.). Now I seem to remember an instance of this reported in the local news in the not too distant past - does that then mean then that the domestic user does need to consider a wire tap as a possible reality and not a myth? In which case should not ISPs make known their procedures for the eventuality?

In reply to a post by cerberus2:

Is a wire tap something the consumer needs to worry about, or purely a myth? (If the former which would be the best ISP?)

Unless you're a jihadist or paedophile there's probably nothing to worry about, and no ISP is immune.