Internet Access and Speed in the Lakes Region

[MAXUM]

Service providers dynamically assign IP addresses to their customers out of a huge pool of available addresses. Any place you visit on the internet can see where your coming from, or the gateway your going though as many providers will NAT out all their traffic. As a matter of fact some sites are able to determine your geographic location and adjust content on the fly just from the source address.

If you are concerned about privacy, this should be the least of your concerns!

[brk-lnt]

Originally Posted by MAXUM

Service providers dynamically assign IP addresses to their customers out of a huge pool of available addresses. Any place you visit on the internet can see where your coming from, or the gateway your going though as many providers will NAT out all their traffic. As a matter of fact some sites are able to determine your geographic location and adjust content on the fly just from the source address.

If you are concerned about privacy, this should be the least of your concerns!

Sort of.
While IP's are dynamically assigned, the average consumer device keeps its IP for 2 years or more if it stays constantly connected and in-use.

IP's can be sorted down to a geographic area with tools like this: http://ipinfo.io/ but *not* down to an individual street address.

I didn't put my real address in the tool either. I used 1 [My Street], that would be accurate to the node that feeds my street, and for any mapping purposes they want/need to do, more granular info than that won't be helpful.

Good data security is actually *really* hard to do, and lots of part-time developers think they understand encryption and security far more than they do in real life. My personal guess would be that the probability of this data getting accidentally released into the wild is fairly low, but the risk is fairly high. In other words, I'd wager that the people collecting this data probably suck at security, but the project is low profile enough that nobody is going to try to hack the data.

However, on the off change the data DOES get leaked, my IP address would only get you as far as my street, not my house.

[Rusty]

Originally Posted by brk-lnt

Sort of.
While IP's are dynamically assigned, the average consumer device keeps its IP for 2 years or more if it stays constantly connected and in-use.

IP's can be sorted down to a geographic area with tools like this: http://ipinfo.io/ but *not* down to an individual street address.

I didn't put my real address in the tool either. I used 1 [My Street], that would be accurate to the node that feeds my street, and for any mapping purposes they want/need to do, more granular info than that won't be helpful.

Good data security is actually *really* hard to do, and lots of part-time developers think they understand encryption and security far more than they do in real life. My personal guess would be that the probability of this data getting accidentally released into the wild is fairly low, but the risk is fairly high. In other words, I'd wager that the people collecting this data probably suck at security, but the project is low profile enough that nobody is going to try to hack the data.

However, on the off change the data DOES get leaked, my IP address would only get you as far as my street, not my house.

I agree with your comments. I did just about the same thing you did when I put the street info in.
My IP doesn't change very often. The webmaster of this forum could tell you how many times mine has changed since I've used "Rusty" as my username.