Setting their sites beyond ISPs, politicians on Tuesday told domain name registries and web hosting companies that Congress is considering mandating that they too retain user records.

One form of data retention legislation could require ISPs and possibly social networking sites and search engines to record for a year or two which IP address is used by which user, reports CNET. Another form would be far broader, requiring companies to record data such as the identities of email correspondents, logs of who sent and received instant messages (but not their content) and the URLs of web pages visited.

The congressional effort is ostensibly to do more to keep illicit child pornography off the internet. But privacy and industry groups, citing the potential for the abuse or misuse of the data, as well as the expenses of storing that data, have generally voiced opposition to mandatory retention.

A data retention bill will be introduced in the House by Rep. Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat, who is apparently negotiating the language with Republican Reps. Joe Barton and Ed Whitfield.