Can ISPs use keyloggers to get passwords, etc?

[cauzomb]

Thanx for the response, jholland . . .

I have not been on this forum that much, but I can tell from the dialog that I have read that many confuser (er...computer) users have really NO CLUE about the dangers of surfing the web, Instant Messaging, sharing files P2P (Peer to Peer), etc.

Luckily, I have no real interest in swapping music with others, or Instant Messaging, etc. So my security requirements are pretty basic:

That is:
Keep Microsoft Updates current. Do not use Outlook Express or Internet Explorer -- I use Firefox and Thunderbird (but there are other good choices I understand). Disable the Widows Services that you don't need (but which can allow vulnerabilities into your system). Use a good firewall. Employ a battery of good anti-spyware software. . . . And keep all of the above updated every week or so.

By "good battery of anti-spyware software" I mean, for example:

Spybot Search & Destroy
Lavasoft's Ad Aware
SpywareGuard
SpywareBlaster
AVG Anti-Spyware (from Grisoft)
AVG Anti-Rootkit Free (from Grisoft)
Microsoft Windows Defender

All of the above are FREE.

And, while I use the $70 Zone Alarm Internet Security Suite, there is the very good Zone Alarm FREE firewall, which is better than the Windows firewall that is part of Windows XP.

I have other software running that I have paid for in addition to the above. However, other good FREEware is CCleaner, CleanUp!, MRU Blaster, which I use also.

Hope this is helpful to anyone needing such information. Thx, again, jholland, for your responses. IANAG is a great forum. and it delivers a lot of great information.

Wanna B Ageek

I agree with the good measures or compilation of products, but many of them have been absorbed by the conglomerate industry leader and have been "re-written" to exclude certain aspects of protections, which means; They are not protective enough, or have been programmed specifically to exclude the conglomerates own versions of spyware/malware,, many of the new free applications are reprogrammed to gather information about what you do on your computer and report it out to a usage computer in efforts to create a "profile" of your activity, behavioral profiling based on stollen private information........ spybot 1.3 and teatimer actually work, but since MS's programmers learned that it actually worked, they "may or maynot have" re-programmed aspects of their opperating system to be incompatible with the applications, so that you no longer have the privacy protections that used to be available... Same with the anti-virus programs that stopped finding "programed not to search for" Certain file's and/or malware/spyware components of applications that are included with all the new stuff that they want you to have in order to re-inforce their profiling and data mining agenda.

[knight0334]

As is was mentioned above - yeah, your ISP could if they really wanted to.

A packet sniffer can be used to capture the encrypted passwords, then they would need to be decrypted - which could take .00001 seconds or 30 years, who knows..

A keylogger would have to reside on your machine for them to snag your password that way - which you'd have to be a complete moron to not know one is on there because just about every mal-ware detection program catches them. If you aren't running one, you had better be pretty good at knowing any/all programs that run on your machine whether in the fore or background.

The key thing to know about ISP's is, they dont give a flying F what your password is to where. And the type of people they hire are generally of the better nature. The odds are you'll get hit by a bus then struck by two bolts of lightning 2 minutes later well before some malicious person is hired and can actually capture your password(s).

[Wanna B Ageek]

The odds are you'll get hit by a bus then struck by two bolts of lightning 2 minutes later well before some malicious person is hired and can actually capture your password(s).

LOL. That is good.

Also, I didn't know I would have to have a keylogger on my machine. That is reasssuring, 'cuz I'm confident I don't have one. Thanks for your reply.

Wanna B Ageek