<p>^Decent advice. Download a massive stockpile before you go off to school. That way you don’t even have to worry about them seeing you downloading porn.</p>
<p>Or just stick to magazines. Be sure your roommate doesn’t see them though.</p>
<p>what is this, the 1980s?</p>
<p>OP’s got to do what he has to do</p>
<p>
Web pages can’t stick together! (gross)</p>
<p>I couldn’t imagine anyone masturbating to a magazine anymore. Seems like that should belong in the same category as fire pits and living in caves. </p>
<p>I wonder how porno magazines stay in business… Who’s buying these anymore?</p>
<p>If you are on the college network, of course they can see everything you do via the network.</p>
<p>Everything goes through the network server, and if they choose to log and monitor those logs, they can.</p>
<p>If they choose to copy every byte that passes through the server, and reconstruct those bytes, they can.</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean that they will, but any competent network administrator can.</p>
<p>^That’s called hacking, and is undoubtedly against any privacy policy any college would have.</p>
<p>It is not hacking to keep logs on the university network computers.</p>
<p>" ^That’s called hacking, and is undoubtedly against any privacy policy any college would have. "</p>
<p>I’m sure they snuck in a clause regarding that in whatever agreement you agree to when getting your account.</p>
<p>“It is not hacking to keep logs on the university network computers.”</p>
<p>To keep logs of IPs and such, no that’s not hacking. To keep all data one downloads or uploads, and then go through it, that’s hacking. </p>
<p>Beyond that, that’s not feasible. I’m sure a typical big state U goes through several (if not hundreds) or TBs daily. Atypical ones, even more.</p>
<p>You don’t understand network traffic.</p>
<p>I request a web page from my browser. Or I request a file from some server somewhere. That goes through the school server - which is another computer. The computer receives that requests, then it submits the request. </p>
<p>A computer, even a personally owned computer, on a school network, does not make requests independently. </p>
<p>Even if you are on your home computer connects to the internet via an ISP such as Verizon or AOL, the request is made to the ISP computers, and the ISP servers submit the request.</p>
<p>Then the computer that holds the file (webpage or download file) sends the information back to the server which then resends the data to your computer.</p>
<p>Hacking is looking at the personal files on an individual’s PC. Keeping records and copies of files that pass through a university owned server is not even close to hacking.</p>
<p>It is trivial for the school network to keep those logs. There is nothing sneaky about it. What they do with that information is up to the sysadmin.</p>
<p>The question was, “CAN colleges check internet history.” The answer is, yes they CAN. Most of the time, they probably don’t.</p>
<p>Dude, I know this. They don’t record the data. That would be hacking. I realize they’re not physically going into your computer and taking data from it. I realize they’re not connecting to your computer remotely and taking data from it. It’s still hacking. It’s still going to be against whatever privacy policy they have. </p>
<p>Could they break the privacy policy, yes I guess they could. In that case they’re certainly not going to admit they broke such in order to accuse you of piracy. In my mind, when it’s against the law, and there’s no upside, or reason for them to break the law, I look at it as if they can’t do it. But fair enough.</p>
<p>Looking up the definition of “hacking” maybe I’m misusing the word… Replace the word hacking with whatever concept you know I mean.</p>
<p>However, they don’t record the data. The data is not available to be searched through or anything like that.</p>
<p>From Northeastern University.</p>
<p>[The</a> Northeastern University Appropriate Use Policy](<a href=“http://www.help.neu.edu/aup.html]The”>http://www.help.neu.edu/aup.html)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That is pretty typical of any university or organization’s internet use policy.</p>
<p>Well if it is THEIR network that they are setting up and providing to US, then they have a right to monitor people’s activity.</p>
<p>Yes they can view all your history and pull up everything you have done. I’m not a cpmputer expert or genius but when I am at home I can view on my main computer all the sites that the other computers go on through the same router. That is if I go to yahoo.com on my laptop, I can go into the router connected to my main computer and see that website was viewed on that computer. As well they can also bring up the history on your user name. The only thing I would add, is unless your doing something highly illegal or unless they get an outside complaint odds are your safe because there are probably thousands of people on the network downloading millions of things that it is difficult to monitor anyone one user unless you have a reason to before hand</p>
<p>I don’t exactly understand how, but certain colleges can monitor your internet activity while on campus. I know that Liberty University can (Thanks, Kevin Roose!), but then again, it’s Liberty; I’m not sure many other colleges would be interested in doing so.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Dear LASTNAME FIRSTNAME</p>
<p>A copyright holder has contacted Ohio State University regarding the
unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material. According to
a company acting on their behalf, on 2010-04-10 12:10:52 an IP address issued to
you was used to offer protected material for download:</p>
<p>Organization: The Entertainment Software Association (ESA)
Infringement:</p>
<p>You have had 0 previous offenses.</p>
<p>I am writing to let you know that further violations of the AUP
(Acceptable Usage Policy) may result in loss of network privileges as
outlined in the explanation of levels above. Further, sharing copyrighted
materials may be illegal and subject you to large fines and other penalties
under the law. </p>
<p>If you need additional information about this incident please contact the
Student Affairs Support Center at (614) 292-5700. The original notice is
shown at the bottom of this letter.</p>
<p>Regards,</p>
<p>Valerie Shafer, Director
Student Affairs Information Technology</p>
<p>Just to post followup. The game was downloaded through Steam, so I kinda doubt they’re the ones that complained.</p>
<p>so what if i don’t wanna download but just watch “stuff” online. Is just streaming cool? And how far can u go downloading? can u download like 1 or 2 songs a week and not get caught? I don’t understand all this tech stuff so can u tell me in simple language</p>
<p>Download songs via P2P? Jeez, just get a YouTube-Downloader and nobody can ever catch you unless they search your PC. Get some encryption for that and you’ll be fine.</p>
<p>For streaming, I’d suggest a minimum security of a VPN. HotSpotShield works brilliantly for that. Personally, I don’t think that it’s worth the bad quality and risk.</p>
<p>Btw, many games/ software products connect to the internet, and that’s how a lot of people get busted. (Even when you don’t open the software).</p>