A good friend of mine (also a hobbyist) is in the process of a divorce.  His wife (who is also a friend, and sort of coworker of my wife) told him the other day that for the last year, every email he sent out was forwarding a copy to a file which is now with her attorney, it has mails between him and touring escorts, and also, him and I exchanging notes (on what I thought were annonymous accounts)  He was always very careful, windows washer etc and kept his laptop pretty secure, she claims she got records of his webtravels from their ISP (a Comcast type of thing) and that she had a techie run email addresses and knows all about ME and my excursions.

Question #1-  Is it possible for your isp to track all of your online activities, and then pass them on when subpoenad?  He was VERY careful about cleaning up after himself, and she apparently went through a back door.

Question 2- Even though it may be late in the game, what is the best software for hiding activities from prying eyes?  Is it foolproof? And is replacing the harddrive the ONLY way to delete all info?

Any info y'all can provide would be appreciated.
Peace,
Fish

I just didn't think that they would welcome it over there.  Personally, I think/pray his wife was talking shit and he slipped up along the way rather then believe that my wife could just call my broadband provider for a nice, collated history of my wackin pages.
I have taken your advice, and posted it there as well, thanks again.
Fish

on your friend's computer. Or e-mail account type was a POP3/IMAP which can be accessed from anywhere by anybody who knows the user name, password for the account.

To answer your questions...

1. Yes ISP would be able to access all the websites you visited. Even with a simple router at home, I can monitor who's visiting which sites, what times, etc and put filters/restrictions on certain web sites.

However, ISP wouldn't be able access content of the communications with secure web sites (https) or over a VPN connection. Most people don't use encryption for e-mails so the ISP would probably have access to their full contents.

2. As you said it's probably too late now especially if the wife had installed a keyboard intercepting software on the computer. The easiest and most practical thing to cover your tracks is to cleanup all temporary files, cookies, and the browser cache after every time you engage in some activities that you don't want others to see.

On top of that there are many sophisticated methods such as using a commercial disk shredder, reformatting hard disk (use an external hard drive), configuring your browser's temporary directory and encrypting contents of it, accessing web over a VPN connection or through an anonymous proxy, etc, etc. You would have to spend a lot of time on these or consult with a professional.

Good luck.

following one of her posts... on the gen. d. Board... see if you can get her attention.