Tracking IP addresses?

[Christin73]

There is someone who will remain nameless, that is known on certain rp sims to track peoples IP addresses. He is not the sim owner and claims it is perfectly legal. I highly dought that. Maybe someone can tell me if it is against TOS to track peoples IP addresses?

[Cerise Sorbet]

Yeah, you can get the address through media on a prim as long as you can rez in the area. All web pages get to see your IP address, it's necessary to make it work. (The same is sort of possible from attachments, but that's disabled by default in all the viewers.)

In the past there were some Vivox flaws that would allow seeing addresses, I don't know if all of those were plugged.

It's not against the terms to see IP addresses, as long as you don't share them with other people.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

I wouldn't worry about it.  An IP address doesn't pinpoint your exact location. IP address just give the general area of where you live. Unless you give out your RL full name that can be looked up in a directory in RL or on the web, the person looking it up won't know your address or exact location.  When my IP address is looked up on IP address search sites, the location it gives is miles from where I actually live.   

As pointed out, all DJ's in SL can see your IP address and all web sites you visit can too.  It isn't really considered all that private. 

You can change your IP address most of the time by unplugging your modem and plugging it back in after about 5 minutes, as most ISP's assign dynamic IP addresses.  You can also use a proxy server to hide it completely.

[Jake Mysterious]

Get NordVPN and you will never have to worry about that problem.

[Callum Meriman]

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Christin73 wrote:

Maybe someone can tell me if it is against TOS to track peoples IP addresses?

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No.

Only to share that information (or alts one discovers) with other people.

If they keep it to themselves then there is nothing wrong being done.

[Syo Emerald]

Every media on a prim sees your IP adress, every website you visit sees your IP adress, same as every stream you connect to (inside and out of SL). Your IP adress is not a secret and not personal. Most people have changing IP adresses and your IP adress only roughly tells someone the area you are in (city, for example). That tells nobody who you are or what your specific adress is. People who use this to tell who is who are stupid drama enthusiasts, but deserve no worry or attention from your side.

[Freya Mokusei]

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Syo Emerald wrote:

 Your IP adress is not a secret and not personal.

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In terms of how SL see it maybe, seeing as LL are based in California. But you may want to be aware of...

Wikipedia GDPR

Which could make it a crime (with fines attached) for folks in the EU (or working off of EU-based servers) to be attempting this nonsense. 'Course you'd have to chase them outside of SL, but that's easy enough.

For practical applications, IP address can become personal data if combined with other data, such as account name. Which would be what these folks would be doing.

[Callum Meriman]

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Freya Mokusei wrote:

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Syo Emerald wrote:

 Your IP adress is not a secret and not personal.

---

In terms of how SL see it maybe, seeing as LL are based in California. But you may want to be aware of...

Wikipedia GDPR

Which could make it a crime (with fines attached) for folks in the EU (or working off of EU-based servers) to be attempting this nonsense. 'Course you'd have to chase them outside of SL, but that's easy enough.

For practical applications, IP address

can become

personal data if combined with other data, such as account name. Which would be what these folks would be doing.

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Interestingly there was a court case in Germany on Wednesday that addressed this. IP addresses are now court-confirmed as private information in the EU and it's illegal to retain them in most cases.

http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2016/10/eu-dynamic-static-ip-personal-data/

 

 

[Freya Mokusei]

Thanks Callum, that's a cool link. Interesting how things change!

[Sassy Romano]

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Callum Meriman wrote:

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Freya Mokusei wrote:

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Syo Emerald wrote:

 Your IP adress is not a secret and not personal.

---

In terms of how SL see it maybe, seeing as LL are based in California. But you may want to be aware of...

Wikipedia GDPR

Which could make it a crime (with fines attached) for folks in the EU (or working off of EU-based servers) to be attempting this nonsense. 'Course you'd have to chase them outside of SL, but that's easy enough.

For practical applications, IP address

can become

personal data if combined with other data, such as account name. Which would be what these folks would be doing.

---

Interestingly there was a court case in Germany on Wednesday that addressed this. IP addresses are now court-confirmed as private information in the EU and it's illegal to retain them in most cases.

http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2016/10/eu-dynamic-static-ip-personal-data/

 

 

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Oh please, bring on the legal cases against the UK in that case since the UK government has and will continue to collect and store IP address records as part of what is being loosely referred to as an "internet connection record".

[Freya Mokusei]

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Sassy Romano wrote:

Oh please, bring on the legal cases against the UK in that case since the UK government has and will continue to collect and store IP address records as part of what is being loosely referred to as an "internet connection record".

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Ok.

IPT - Bulk Data Judgement against GCHQ/MI5/MI6

But also, some of the details of these brand new developments haven't been tested in UK courts yet, since they rely on case law and GDPR comes into full force in 2018. I fully expect it will be fun times, the UK will still be required to comply.

[Sassy Romano]

I know about that judgement and the case that went before it where mid legal case, the government retrospectively changed the legislation to make it seem like it was ok.

GDPR won't apply to the UK post departure from the EU but given that the UK will probably want to have a relationship, it will need to have in place something that is suitably equivalent.

Not that it matters, the government won't adhere to any legislation anyway.

Long and complex topics, not for this forum for me so i'll slink back away again 

[Chaser Zaks]

It's not that big if a deal as long as you havent opened a ton of ports. :v

EG: My IP address (as of this post) is 40.136.227.97. It doesn't let you do much, it'll let you connect to my web server, OSGrid sims, starbound server, etc, but thats about it.

If you put it through a GeoIP locator, it'll tell you I live in elizabethtown kentucky, but ONLY to city level. City level is the most accurate, anything closer is highly unreliable, and not even city level GeoIP is all that accurate. Once it said I lived in Ohio or something.

 

As for obtaining the IP, theres only 3 ways:

1. Click someone's link, sometimes these are "IP finder" links, which look like referral codes, eg: http://example.com/?id=fh3fdksk3mf †, where they have a different page which shows which IPs click the link.
2. Use MOAP.
3. Use parcel media.

Is it dangerous? Most likely no. 90% of people who says they will "hack you", or have a "hacker friend" or stuff along those lines do not know the first thing about hacking and probably has no friends in the first place. Just point and laugh at them. :3

 

†Example.com is owned by IANA, one of the groups of people who manage the TLDs such as .com and .org, the URL in this case is perfectly safe.

[Qie Niangao]

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Chaser Zaks wrote:

As for obtaining the IP, theres only 3 ways:

1. Click someone's link, sometimes these are "IP finder" links, which look like referral codes, eg:
   http://example.com/?id=fh3fdksk3mf
    
   †
   , where they have a different page which shows which IPs click the link.
2. Use MOAP.
3. Use parcel media.

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For #1, I assume you mean links offered by a script, as with llLoadURL(). That would be trivial for associating avatar identity to IP address. (It's way harder to do that with clicks to URLs offered inside a profile, say, or otherwise scattered where the unwary might click.)

Just for completeness, parcel audio is another way to harvest IPs, but again the association with avatar identity is difficult and inexact. In fact, MOAP shouldn't be much better, unless there's a trick I don't know about. Parcel media makes it trivial to do that, for victims that leave it unscreened.

Also, voice is very often reported to leak IP addresses through the bug or exploit of the day. No idea if that's a real threat at the moment.