# ntop Privacy Notices

## End Users

If you have concerns about your privacy, please read this notice.

After reading it, if you have any concerns about your privacy while using any networked system please contact your systems administrator(s) to discuss your concerns.

If you are seeing this notice, it is likely that the ntop program is being used by your systems administrators to monitor network usage and that the information collected by ntop is available to end users.

Please be aware that all ntop does is to examine the contents of the information flowing over the networks to which it is connected. ntop has no special privileges - this information is available to ANY similarly connected network user.

The information collected by ntop does contain individually identifiable information, that is information about your individual usage of this computer network. For example, this information will indicate the sites your computer has contacted, the protocol used (e.g. http or ftp), the amount of information transferred and the duration of each contact. All of this is derived from the header which is a part of each chunk of information (called a packet) transmitted or received over the network. This header information is similar to the destination and return address on a postal card - it's visible to anyone who happens to see the card.

In addition, some information within the packets is also examined and reported. This will indicate, for example, the user names used to contact mail servers, P2P networks, etc. This information is also available to ANY computer on the network with the same connections as the ntop host. It is just not normally viewed. Thus you should expect information transmitted over a computer network to be similar to a postal card - visible to anyone who happens to look over it. If this is a concern for you, you should discuss appropriate security measures, such as encryption and Virtual Private Networks with your systems administrator(s).

The information collected by ntop may, or may not, be made available to end users - this is entirely at the discretion of the systems administrator(s). If it is made available, then the information discussed above is available to other individuals. If this is a privacy concern for you, please contact your systems administrator(s). The authors of ntop do not have any control nor special influence over the administrator(s) of your local system. Please do not contact the authors of ntop regarding your individual privacy concerns.

For more information about ntop, please ask your systems administrator(s) or visit www.ntop.org.

## Systems Administrators

An abbreviated version of this privacy notice is printed by ntop in the system log (or directed to the executing users' terminal) during the very first run of ntop. An authorized user may click here to force ntop to report the privacy notice at the beginning of EVERY future run. Or you may click here to have ntop re-issue the privacy notice at the beginning of the next ntop run and then stop issuing it for future runs.

By default at startup and at periodic intervals, the ntop program will retrieve a file containing current ntop program version information. Retrieving this file allows this ntop instance to confirm that it is running the most current version.

The retrieval is done using standard http:// requests, which will create log records on the hosting system. These log records do contain information which identifies a specific ntop site. Accordingly, you are being notified that this individually identifiable information is being transmitted and recorded.

You may request - via the --skip-version-check run-time option - that this check be eliminated. If you use this option, no individually identifiable information is transmitted or recorded, because the entire retrieval and check is skipped.

We ask you to allow this retrieval and check, because it benefits both you and the ntop developers. It benefits you because you will be automatically notified if the ntop program version is obsolete, becomes unsupported or is no longer current. It benefits the developers of ntop because it allows us to determine the number of active ntop instances, and the operating system/versions that users are running ntop under. This allows us to focus development resources on systems like those our users are using ntop on.

The individually identifiable information is contained in the web server log records which are automatically created each time the version file is retrieved. This is a function of the web server and not of ntop, but we do take advantage of it. The log record shows the IP address of the requestor (the ntop instance) and a User-Agent header field. We place information in the User-Agent header as follows:

     ntop/<version>
     host/<name from config.guess>
     distro/<if one>
     release/<of the distro, also if one>
     kernrlse/<kernel version or release>
     GCC/<version>
     config() - condensed parameters from ./configure&
     run() - condensed flags - no data - from the execution line
     libpcap/<version>
     gdbm/<version>
     openssl/<version>
     zlib/<version>
     access/<http, https, both or none>
     interfaces() <given interface names>

For example:

     ntop/2.2.98 host/i686-pc-linux-gnu distro/redhat release/9 kernrlse/2.4.20-8smp
     GCC/3.2.2 config(i18n) run(i; u; P; w; t; logextra; m; instantsessionpurge;
     schedyield; d; usesyslog=; t) gdbm/1.8.0 openssl/0.9.7a zlib/1.1.4
     access/http interfaces(eth0,eth1)

- Distro and release information is determined at compile time and consists of information typically found in the /etc/release (or similar) file. See the ntop tool linuxrelease for how this is determined.
- gcc compiler version (if available) is the internal version #s for the gcc compiler, e.g. 3.2.3.
- kernrlse is the Linux Kernel version or the xBSD release such as 4.9-RELEASE and is determined from the uname data (if it's available).
- The ./configure parameters are stripped of directory paths, leading -s, etc. to create a short form that shows us what ./configure parameters people are using.
- Similarly, the run time parameters are stripped of data and paths, just showing which flags are being used.
- The libpcap, gdbm, openssl and zlib versions come from the strings returned by the various inquiry functions (if they're available).

### Sample log record

     67.xxx.xxx.xxx - - [28/Dec/2003:12:11:46 -0500] "GET /version.xml HTTP/1.0"
     200 1568 www.burtonstrauss.com "-" "ntop/2.2.98 host/i686-pc-linux-gnu
      distro/redhat release/9 kernrlse/2.4.20-8smp GCC/3.2.2 config(i18n)
     run(i; u; P; w; t; logextra; m; instantsessionpurge; schedyield; d;
     usesyslog=) libpcap/0.8 gdbm/1.8.0 openssl/0.9.7a zlib/1.1.4
     access/http interfaces(eth0,eth1,eth2)" "-"

### ntop access log report

    Today, since Midnight US EST

    Processed from logs/access.log.02.3 on Wed Jan 7 14:01:01 EST 2004

    ntop   OS      Version        Cpu     kernel/rlse     s n GCC    http? ssl    gdbm  zlib  pcap interfaces
    ------ ------- -------------- ------- --------------- - - ------ ----- ------ ----- ----- ---- ----------
    2.2.98 Darwin  7.2.0          powerpc 7.2.0               3.3.0  http  0.9.7b 1.8.3 1.1.4      default NIC
    2.2.98 Darwin  7.2.0          powerpc 7.2.0               3.3.0  http  0.9.7b 1.8.3 1.1.4      en0
    ...
    2.2.98 Linux   slackware9.0.0 i686    2.4.24              3.2.2  http  0.9.7c 1.8.0 1.1.4      eth0,
    2.2.98 Solaris 8              sparc                       3.3.0  both  0.9.7b 1.8.3 1.1.4      le0,le1
    non-ntop from 194.65.xxx.xxx  is host/i686-pc-linux-gnu distro/fedora release/1 kernrlse/2.4.22-1.2129.nptl GCC/3.3.2 config  run user dbfilepath daemon gdbm/1.8.0 openssl/0.9.7a zlib/1.2.1 access/http interfaces(null

        72 log records processed
        67 version.xml records

### ntop access log report

    All log files - by (blinded) IP

    Processed on Wed Jan 7 02:01:01 CST 2004

    Count   Source(ip)      ntop   OS      Version        Cpu     kernel/rlse     s n
    ------- --------------- ------ ------- -------------- ------- --------------- - -
          1   12.41.xxx.xxx 2.2.98 Linux   fedora1        i686    2.4.22-1.2135     y
          2  61.171.xxx.xxx 2.2.98 Linux                  i686    2.4.20-proxy
          4  61.220.xxx.xxx 2.2.98 FreeBSD 4.6.2          i386    4.6.2-RELEASE
    ...
          3  219.76.xxx.xxx 2.2.98 Solaris 9              i386
          1  219.76.xxx.xxx 2.2.98 Solaris 9              i386

NOTES: This report is prepared by sorting and compressing requests using the unblinded ip address. Thus:

- Adjacent lines that are completely identical are indicative of multiple requests from different machines in the same /16 block.
- Adjacent lines that have the same /16 address but are otherwise different may be different machines or may be from the same machine running multiple OSes/versions