Is there a system within Router OS to map a user to all the URLS that they visit.

I see that a post was started a while back here: http://forum.mikrotik.com//viewtopic.ph ... highlight=

But there did not seem to be any real answer or conclusion in that discussion.

I'm new to all this, but I can see that all the information is there waiting to be gathered and integrated to produce a complete log. The urls appear in DNS cache, users, MACs and leases are in Hotspot etc.

As I say, it is beyond my knowledge and capability right now, but does someone familiar with logging etc know a way to tie these up together to generate a historic record showing the member + mac, the lease they were granted and the urls they visited.

Your help and comments are most welcome.

I think a solution to your requirements would involve sending the relevant information from the MT router (web-proxy URLs, hotspot logins, DHCP assignments, etc...) to a remote syslog server and then you'd write some scripts (perl would be good for this) to match and combine user login (session) start/stop times with all the other information for a session (URLs visited etc.)

It's not easy, could be quite tricky to get right.

But before you even think about implementing something like this I'd strongly suggest that you check out the privacy rights / data protection laws in your country. Personally, I'd think such a solution violates just about every privacy / data protection law there is, and furthermore it's just not ethical to spy on your customers in such ways, IMHO.

I fully realize that in many countries laws are being established to force communication providers into supporting government agencies with their data mining activities (so called "lawful interception" etc.), but even under such regulations it might not be a good idea to track all information for all users all the time. A correct implementation of lawful interception might require a time-limited, more specific data gathering for just a limited set of users that need to be named upfront by the government agency, that is they'd tell you to monitor the accounts "smith" and "miller" starting 8/1/2006 and ending 8/15/2006 etc. and then you'd still have to make sure that you only store information for these two accounts and no others.


--Tom

tneumann - thanks for your advice and your comments.

From our point of view we have no interest or benefit in keeping such information and wasting space...

.. it is that we have been told that in UK it will soon be compulsory for (W)ISPs to have this historical information available, stretching back for some (as yet unspecified) time.

Just as in the same way the mobile phone companies must keep phone records and also historical cell/caller/location information on hand for possible future analysis.

If this is set to become a legal requirement, we need to find a way to implement it without breaking the bank. Hence the planning and preparation.

I agree that it looks dodgy from the privacy laws perspective, given that police/security services need a court order or direct ministerial approval under terrorist powers to record someone elses phone conversations.