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Would it Bother You?

Would it bother you if your IP address were clearly visible?

  • Absolutely! It would be very upsetting!

    Votes: 20 29.0%

  • Yes, I'd be a little bothered, but I'd get over it.

    Votes: 8 11.6%

  • I don't really care, but I'd rather it weren't

    Votes: 18 26.1%

  • I don't care.

    Votes: 11 15.9%

  • What, you want my IP address? Here it is:

    Votes: 12 17.4%
  • Total voters
    69

scribble

Master Poster
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Nov 16, 2001
Messages
2,687
Simple question - would it bother you if the IP address you are using to view JREF was clearly visible to anyone else on the forums?

I'll abstain from voting and give my answer here so as not to upset the results.

It wouldn't bother me in the slightest, since I pretty much have to assume that anyone who wants it can figure it out.
 
If there's a legitimate privacy concern, I'd sure like to know what it is.
 
Since I don't get a fixed IP from my ISP, I don't have any great concern. But, because I usually stay logged on my IP rarely changes. If I started to get any sort of Denial of Service attacks, I suppose my ISP would change it for me.

Now once upon a time, when the Internet was a kinder and gentler place, I posted to Usenet with my real name and e-mail addy.
 
vbull.gif

Oops, double post.
 
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Arkan_Wolfshade said:
Because of sites like this: http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm
and because, for example, if my public-facing ip were visible, then someone like jackchit could look up my ISP and file a false complaint with them, causing me a hassle.
Click to expand...

Heey, GeoIP is so last month:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=78866

:)

Arkan, I'd hope you ISP wouldn't respond to a false requests or give you any hassle about it -- it's far too easy to get someone's IP address if you really want it. I'd hope the days of ISPs hassling people over potenitally false accusations is long over with all the IRC and forum vendettas that people get involved in.

I'm thinking about writing a post describing how someone might theoretically get IP addresses of other users on a Vbulletin system like the JREF. You should probably assume that I'm not the first person to think of such a technique.
 
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My home setup has a permanent IP address. I run a small business from home, and I host my own homepage and mail server from there.

Yes, it would bother me tremendously for my nickname here to be linked to my IP address.
 
scribble said:
Heey, GeoIP is so last month:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=78866

:)

Arkan, I'd hope you ISP wouldn't respond to a false requests or give you any hassle about it -- it's far too easy to get someone's IP address if you really want it. I'd hope the days of ISPs hassling people over potenitally false accusations is long over with all the IRC and forum vendettas that people get involved in.

I'm thinking about writing a post describing how someone might theoretically get IP addresses of other users on a Vbulletin system like the JREF. You should probably assume that I'm not the first person to think of such a technique.
Click to expand...
Would be easy enough to do by exploiting the [ img ] [ /img ] tags. But that does at least require some level of effort. Having them displayed on the forum itself would be quite conducive to screen-scraper bots and the like.
 
scribble said:
How would you do it?
Click to expand...
Any scripting language with access to a graphics library (PHP with gd comes to mind) can be used to generate images. An IMG tag could point to that script which would record the client's IP. Of course, I don't see how you could connect this to a username because they are either stored in cookies or sessions, both of which should be inaccessible to another site.

To the OP, I see no advantage to making IPs publicly viewable. I'm sure that they are recorded by the forum software anyways (so you could easily ban an IP from posting).

Unless there were some reason to change, I say leave it as is (not viewable).
 
opqdan said:
Any scripting language with access to a graphics library (PHP with gd comes to mind) can be used to generate images. An IMG tag could point to that script which would record the client's IP. Of course, I don't see how you could connect this to a username because they are either stored in cookies or sessions, both of which should be inaccessible to another site.
Click to expand...

Good, yes, you see the problem.

But there is a simple way to connect the IP address to the user.

To the OP, I see no advantage to making IPs publicly viewable. I'm sure that they are recorded by the forum software anyways (so you could easily ban an IP from posting).

Unless there were some reason to change, I say leave it as is (not viewable).
Click to expand...

I agree; I don't think there is any reason to make it viewable. To be clear, this poll was really started so I could gauge the sort of responses I might get if I started a detailed thread about how to go about getting the addresses. I'd like to share this info, along with some tips on how to you as a user could prevent it from working against you.

I think if I did post such an article here it would be pretty Digg-able, and maybe bring some interest to the JREF.
 
scribble said:
How would you do it?
Click to expand...
Disclaimer: I'm a DBA, not a web code monkey, so this is based upon my interactions w/ web code monkeys.


Host the image in question on the same website as you have your logger (for connect info). Assuming that when someone views said image from the forum that the IP you log is that of the user, not the forum host, you'd have the IP's. If you were interested in a particular user, you could PM them the image in question so you would have control over who was going to be viewing it.
 
Arkan_Wolfshade said:
Disclaimer: I'm a DBA, not a web code monkey, so this is based upon my interactions w/ web code monkeys.
Click to expand...

Monkeys! Why I oughtta'... eat a banana.

Host the image in question on the same website as you have your logger (for connect info). Assuming that when someone views said image from the forum that the IP you log is that of the user, not the forum host, you'd have the IP's.
Click to expand...

If you have an image hosted and log attempts to view it (I think this is what you are trying to suggest) then you do get a list of IP addresses that do belong to forum members, but as opqdan points out, if that's all you do, you don't know which user is which IP address.

If you were interested in a particular user, you could PM them the image in question so you would have control over who was going to be viewing it.
Click to expand...

That would be a clever way to know which user was the connecting IP address! Not at all the way I had in mind.
 
I'm still not entirely sure how revealing my IP could be a Bad Thing. I'm not arguing to the contrary, I'm just ignorant, I guess. My IP can reveal that I'm in a certain city, but so are > 650,000 other people.

By comparison, hundreds of potentially insane people can read the license plate number on my car every day, from which they can glean far more detailed personal information. Also, in the US, most county tax assessor/collectors maintain publicly accessible websites by which a property owner's home address and property value can be ascertained based solely on their name, or the owner's name based only on the street address.

Why then should I worry that my IP address might locate me geographically?
 
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