I.P. address

booneruk

cerebus said:

Can you tell me how they could find me if I was to do that? 

I gave this subject some thought yesterday (after my drive by WIFI crime example), and could only thinking of CCTV having a clear view of your screen or the unique MAC address attached to your networking card somehow being identified as belonging to you personally.

Though, you could always buy a networking card from a car boot sale, take it out for a single bit of criminality and then chuck it 

wongataa

booneruk said:

cerebus said:

Can you tell me how they could find me if I was to do that? 

I gave this subject some thought yesterday (after by drive by WIFI crime example), and could only thinking of CCTV having a clear view of your screen or the unique MAC address attached to your networking card somehow being identified as belonging to you personally.

Though, you could always buy a networking card from a car boot sale, take it out for a single bit of criminality and then chuck it 

It would be a lot easier to just change the MAC address of the kit you already have.  That isn't difficult.

flaneurs_lobster

wongataa said:

booneruk said:

cerebus said:

Can you tell me how they could find me if I was to do that? 

I gave this subject some thought yesterday (after by drive by WIFI crime example), and could only thinking of CCTV having a clear view of your screen or the unique MAC address attached to your networking card somehow being identified as belonging to you personally.

Though, you could always buy a networking card from a car boot sale, take it out for a single bit of criminality and then chuck it 

It would be a lot easier to just change the MAC address of the kit you already have.  That isn't difficult.

Even easier - Internet cafe, they do still exist. Pay for your time with cash. Deployed hoodie optional. 

castle96

So...BBC I player cannot trace you through an IP address?  I have no VPN and looking up my IP address (which changes all the time///) locates me sometimes 2/50/100 miles away

booneruk

castle96 said:

So...BBC I player cannot trace you through an IP address?  I have no VPN and looking up my IP address (which changes all the time///) locates me sometimes 2/50/100 miles away

It can only tell the location of the ISP centre you are connected through. I wonder how iPlayer works for users on the NI/ROI border. Presumably someone on the NI side could use a ROI registered ISP. What would iPlayer make of that?

matelodave

Yesterday my IP address found me in Rochdale some 192 miles away,  today it seems to be Boreham Wood 85 miles away.

I reckon I'm pretty safe from anyone knocking on my door after a simple IP look-up, although I guess those in the know can get the info from my ISP provider if they really wanted it

GDB2222

littleboo said:

Geolocation is going to be more successful with a booneruk said:

littleboo said:

I don't think anybody claimed it was 100%

It's not really close to 100% in any way, ever. IP addresses will only ever point street-address wise to a location operated by your internet provider (ISP), VPN, proxy etc (well, I guess technically you could live next door to your ISP).

For example, I use Maxmind to "locate" me through my virgin media connection and it shows a town 2miles away from me. I connect my PC to my 4G router instead, go to Maxmind and suddenly it points at Victoria, London (about 8 miles away).

I activate a proxy in my web browser, and now it shows my location somewhere in Western Europe.

Which one is my location?

Geo-location by IP is only really reliable to country level, and that's easy enough to trick by using a VPN or proxy.

I've worked with a company who used Maxmind and the result can be very good, particularly down to a city. It’s a commercial service and wouldn't exist if it didn't have some level of usefulness. A 4G connection is obviously not a good example, a static IP on a fixed line service is likely to be more successful. Online services sharing anonomised data about Public IP address activity starts to build a picture over time.

 I have a fixed line, with a static IP address, and as I said Maxmind is inaccurate- very inaccurate! 

cerebus

booneruk said:

cerebus said:

Can you tell me how they could find me if I was to do that? 

I gave this subject some thought yesterday (after my drive by WIFI crime example), and could only thinking of CCTV having a clear view of your screen or the unique MAC address attached to your networking card somehow being identified as belonging to you personally.

Though, you could always buy a networking card from a car boot sale, take it out for a single bit of criminality and then chuck it 

I doubt cctv cameras could zoom in with enough clarity to read what you were doing on such a tiny screen plus what's stopping you simply positioning yourself in a way to avoid the cameras or so your screen can't be read?

How on earth would the mac address be identified as belonging to you if you have bought the phone/laptop for cash and even then are mac addresses recorded as belonging to a person?

onomatopoeia99

booneruk said:

cerebus said:

Can you tell me how they could find me if I was to do that? 

I gave this subject some thought yesterday (after my drive by WIFI crime example), and could only thinking of CCTV having a clear view of your screen or the unique MAC address attached to your networking card somehow being identified as belonging to you personally.

Though, you could always buy a networking card from a car boot sale, take it out for a single bit of criminality and then chuck it 

The MAC address is only unique in the current subnet and doesn't propogate beyond it, so the router would have to store it.  Even if it did, there is nothing to prevent the client from changing it to one of their own devising for the duration of that session only.  Even Windows lets you use a random address on wifi connections.

Given that bit 1 of the first octet of the MAC is there to permit self-generated values rather than globally unique values, any kind of reliance on it for anything other than ARP packets is ill-advised.

Why do people keep talking about MAC addresses as some kind of method of tracking / identifying a user?

cerebus

onomatopoeia99 said:

booneruk said:

cerebus said:

Can you tell me how they could find me if I was to do that? 

I gave this subject some thought yesterday (after my drive by WIFI crime example), and could only thinking of CCTV having a clear view of your screen or the unique MAC address attached to your networking card somehow being identified as belonging to you personally.

Though, you could always buy a networking card from a car boot sale, take it out for a single bit of criminality and then chuck it 

The MAC address is only unique in the current subnet and doesn't propogate beyond it, so the router would have to store it.  Even if it did, there is nothing to prevent the client from changing it to one of their own devising for the duration of that session only.  Even Windows lets you use a random address on wifi connections.

Given that bit 1 of the first octet of the MAC is there to permit self-generated values rather than globally unique values, any kind of reliance on it for anything other than ARP packets is ill-advised.

Why do people keep talking about MAC addresses as some kind of method of tracking / identifying a user?

Conspiracy theorists?