Can people see the IP address

RobTang

kwikbreaks wrote: »

Malcom - could I interest you in one of these....



It's certainly true that advertising trackers are sophisticated but there is no relevance in that to whether or not an email recipient can work out the IP it was sent from or make any use of that info if they can.

Cookies are just text files stored by the browser and your IP is irrelevant to their use.

While at a low technical level you are correct, some things are when you combine them are worth more than the sum of their parts.




While I wouldn't go as far a Malcom but a big enough dataset can de-anonymise your identity or give a close enough match that it doesn't matter anyway.

MalcolmY

Ha, ha, very funny.

And original! (not)

I do know what cookies are and what they're meant for. But it's a shame that so many share your opinion and state the obvious - "they are just text files" - as some sort of a "don't worry" mantra.

You couldn't be more wrong. I know a lot about cookies, super-cookies, persistent cookies, cookie profiling (which data is sold to marketers) and even cookie hijacking. And that's before we get to the spyware called Adobe Flash and their LSOs.

RobTang wrote: »

While I wouldn't go as far a Malcom but a big enough dataset can de-anonymise your identity...

It's commonly accepted that deanonymising of data needs just three to four points of reference. Heck, I can often do it with just two.

Anyone who thinks I'm nuts may learn a lot if they sign their company up for WowAnalytics, MixPanel, LeadForensics and KissMetrics to name just a few ... and see what those boys can do! Within a second of someone landing on my page FOR THE FIRST TIME I have his name, email address, company name, number of employees at his company, their last annual return, his home and office phone numbers, his FB and Twitter handles and much more. All from "just his IP" and those useless little "text files"

But, I'm not here to convince anyone. I left my advice for the OP - he's right to worry about the IP - and it's up to him how he wants to use it.

kwikbreaks

Yes but they can do all that without reference to an IP. Plus the question was about email recipients and not what can be gleaned from website visits.

onomatopoeia99

MalcolmY wrote: »

Anyone who thinks I'm nuts may learn a lot if they sign their company up for WowAnalytics, MixPanel, LeadForensics and KissMetrics to name just a few ... and see what those boys can do! Within a second of someone landing on my page FOR THE FIRST TIME I have his name, email address, company name, number of employees at his company, their last annual return, his home and office phone numbers, his FB and Twitter handles and much more. All from "just his IP" and those useless little "text files"

You can get my name, address and telephone number from my IP address without any of that lot. It's in the whois records for the subnet stored at RIPE.

Consequently, I find it quite hard to get excited about cookies and whatnot. I have always worked on the basis that anonymity is impossible on the Internet without taking special measures (using an onion router etc) and behave accordingly.

MalcolmY

kwikbreaks, you're not just giving your IP, your email address is included as well. That's two points of reference at the very minimum which can be tied to all the sites you recently visited (or are going to visit).

onomatopoeia99 wrote: »

Y I have always worked on the basis that anonymity is impossible on the Internet without taking special measures (using an onion router etc) ...

I agree. That's what I meant when I told the OP to use TOR (The Onion Router).

Fightsback

MalcolmY wrote: »

kwikbreaks, you're not just giving your IP, your email address is included as well. That's two points of reference at the very minimum which can be tied to all the sites you recently visited (or are going to visit).


I agree. That's what I meant when I told the OP to use TOR (The Onion Router).

Tor isn't as secure as you think it is.

http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/26/tor-email-service-faces-attack/

Kendall80

You could try using Cyberghost. I'm currently using the free option but I'll probably upgrade soon to add file sharing functionality. Throughput speed is good.


TOR is quite slow - I only use it to access sites that UK ISPs recently blocked.

MalcolmY

Fightsback wrote: »

Tor isn't as secure as you think it is.
http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/26/tor-email-service-faces-attack/

I never made any claims about how secure it is; I doubt you know what I think.

Engadget's a little late to the party. As usual.

NSA has long since cracked TOR (though NSA's early attempts in 2010 failed).

But the OP didn't sound like he wanted to protect against the NSA. He simply wants to email people he's met on forums and to withold his IP from them. We aren't talking enterprise grade intrusion prevention.