Umm, by law they need to maintain records for a certain amount of time which can be subpoenaed.
Originally Posted by NYr
Which means absolutely nothing. When was the last time you heard of someone being arrested for surfing websites that have nothing to do with illegal porn, piracy, terrorism, credit card, or a threat. Almost never. ISP doing security is what I do for a living.
The chances of the police busting door your door for VIEWING an escort ad on Backpage is slim to none. In the 10+ years in my job, I have never seen a request for an IP address of someone viewing an escort ad out of the tens of thousands of requests I've worked. I've handled plenty of requests for the IP's of people that POST on Backpage, but never for someone viewing an ad.