{"id":14411,"date":"2026-07-03T10:11:27","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T07:11:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/useroam.com\/5651-log-saklama-suresi-wi-fi-kayitlari-ne-kadar-tutulmali\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T13:33:06","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T10:33:06","slug":"5651-log-saklama-suresi-wi-fi-kayitlari-ne-kadar-tutulmali","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/useroam.com\/en\/5651-log-saklama-suresi-wi-fi-kayitlari-ne-kadar-tutulmali\/","title":{"rendered":"5651 Log Retention Period: How Long Should Wi-Fi Logs Be Retained?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>5651 log retention period<\/strong>...specifies how long and under what conditions businesses that provide internet access to their guests are legally required to retain the traffic logs associated with that access. Regardless of whether it is a caf\u00e9, restaurant, hotel, shopping mall, hospital, school, dormitory, or office, any business that provides Wi-Fi to its guests is considered a \u201cpublic access provider\u201d under Law No. 5651, and this obligation applies directly to the business. <a href=\"https:\/\/useroam.com\/en\/hotspot-ozellikleri\/\">Useroam Cloud hotspot features<\/a>, automates the collection, signing, and storage of these records for the duration of their validity.<\/p>\n<h2>Which Records Must Be Retained?<\/h2>\n<p>Just as the retention period is important, so is what is retained. For records to be considered valid during an audit, they are expected to uniquely identify the user and the connection:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Internal IP distribution logs:<\/strong> Which internal IP address was assigned to which user, on what date and at what time.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Identity matching information:<\/strong> A match between the connected user\u2019s verified identity (SMS or WhatsApp verification, or an SMS-verified phone number) and their MAC address.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Connection time information:<\/strong> The start and end times of the session must be linked to NAT records.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>What Is the Legal Retention Period?<\/h2>\n<p>Under Law No. 5651 and related regulations, commercial providers of mass-use services must maintain internal IP distribution logs <strong>at least 1 year<\/strong> must be retained; for internet service providers, this period is defined as between 6 months and 2 years. In practice, records must be retained to accommodate retroactive requests in legal proceedings. <strong>Up to 2 years<\/strong> Storing data is a common and secure approach. In addition to the duration, there are two other conditions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Integrity:<\/strong> Records must be verifiably unaltered from the moment they are created; this requires signing with a timestamp.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Accessibility:<\/strong> Records for the relevant date range must be provided within a reasonable timeframe upon request by the competent authorities.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>The Most Common Data Retention Mistakes Made by Businesses<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Storage on the device:<\/strong> If logs are stored only on the modem or firewall, the records will be permanently lost if the device malfunctions or is replaced.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Unsigned record:<\/strong> Logs stored without a timestamp lose their evidentiary value because it cannot be proven that they have not been altered.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Anonymous log:<\/strong> Even if logs are kept on a network provided with a shared Wi-Fi password, it is not possible to determine which individual the log entry belongs to.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Failure to comply with the deadline:<\/strong> Deleting old records when the disk is full can lead to data loss before the legal retention period has expired.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Useroam with Automatic and Secure Log Storage<\/h2>\n<p>Useroam Cloud matches guest Wi-Fi logs with authentication data, signs them with a timestamp, and securely stores them in the cloud for the legally required period. Hardware failures, branch changes, or staff errors will not affect your records; you can access the relevant records from a single dashboard during an audit. In multi-location businesses, the retention policy for all locations is centrally managed under a single standard.<\/p>\n<h2>Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2>\n<h3>What should be done with logs whose retention period has expired?<\/h3>\n<p>Records for which the legal retention period has expired must be destroyed or anonymized in accordance with the principle of purpose limitation under the KVKK. Indefinite retention poses a risk from a personal data protection perspective; the correct approach is a time-based automatic retention and destruction policy.<\/p>\n<h3>Can logs be stored in the cloud?<\/h3>\n<p>Yes. What matters is that the integrity of the records is preserved with a timestamp and can be provided upon request. Cloud-based storage is a more secure method than local storage because it eliminates the risks of device failure and data loss.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/useroam.com\/en\/iletisim\/\">Get a free demo for 5651-compliant log storage \u2192<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The data retention period under Law No. 5651 specifies how long and under what conditions businesses are legally required to retain guest Wi-Fi access logs. In this guide, we explain the retention periods and the correct methods for storing this data.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hotspot-5651-rehberi","th-blog blog-single"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/useroam.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/useroam.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/useroam.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/useroam.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/useroam.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14411"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/useroam.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14434,"href":"https:\/\/useroam.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14411\/revisions\/14434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/useroam.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/useroam.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/useroam.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}