Privacy/Security: How to change my IP address daily or weekly on DSL

How the NNTP psting host gets added to the post is dependent on the software that injects the posting into the newsfeed. This software is probably at your ISP, which means they get to set the policy of how it is set. If you want to truly change it, you need to either find an ISP specific solution, or use a different method of getting your news into the newsfeed. Whether there exists an ISP specific solution, depends on your ISP. For example, my ISP does not associate my postings with my computer--in fact, it doesn't even know the name, IP, or MAC address of my computer.

Now, when I talk about my ISP (The World), I'm not talking about my cable provider, which is what connects my home to the (and does know my computers IP and MAC address) internet, nor the way my work setup is connected to the internet either. I am talking about a specifc company that provides exactly the service of getting mail and news from the internet and posting news onto the internet--thus I should probably really call it my mail/news service provider. I do that for exactly the opposite reason of what you are asking for, so that I have a well know address that people can reach me at that doesn't change over the years. However, one could use it to get what you want privacy.

I have also used "free email" addresses to get something closer to the anonymity you are seeking. Those are relatively effective. You can use those to create postings, if you learn how, and if so, you are likely to be mostly anonymous, and your posting won't be easily (i.e. by your kids) tracked back to you, unless they hire a professional.

If they hire a professional to track down your information, you aren't likely to be able to get the privacy you desire. (So, for instance, if you are cheating on your husband, he will find that information out, even if you try to keep it private. Noreover, he will find out not via tracking your internet posting IPs. As they say, been there, done that.) You should also assume that most "kooks" are capable of doing what professionals do.

In other words, a motivated person can break your privacy shield. An unmotivated person will probably never know (nor care that) you are trying to keep something private. There are simple things that can assist your privacy. Using a free email service to create a "disposable" email address is one of them. Trying to hide your home computers posting address, is not one of them. If you want to disassociate from some posting, DON'T DO IT FROM YOUR HOME COMPUTER.

If you are ashamed of your previous postings, sorry it is too late. You are better off figuring out how to deal with your choices of actions, rather than trying to hide from them.

You keep trying the attention of this thread on how to hide your IP/NNTP posting host. You may or may not be able to do that via an ISP specific solution. Most DSL modems and routers aren't designed to make it easy for you to change their IP address by forcing them to renew it. Keeping the IP address constant is an efficiency issue. It is generally more useful to keep the address constant, than it is to change it. However, with a server that has more potential modems connected than addresses, it is useful to "release" addresses of modems that aren't connected, because the assumption is that most modems are not connected, because they can't all be connected, given that there aren't enough addresses. Therefore, your ISP may recycle IP addresses, to serve a large community with fewer resources. Still, that is for their benefit not yours, and how often they recycle addresses may (or may not) be something you can influence. You can play with your modem settings (and it is more likely the modem settings if you have a separate modem and router--note my modem has NO user configurable settings). However, even if you change them, you may have to turn your modem off to get it to release the IP address. Moorever, your IP may reassign the same IP address when your modem is turned back on, if that is convenient to them, and quite likely will give you the same address if your modem is off for a sufficiently short period of time.

Note, if your modem has a MAC address, I defintely recommend NOT trying to change that. It is quite likely that your ISP keeps a list of the valid MAC addresses for the modems connected to its service, and only allows those MAC addresses to connect. By the way, many ISPs use the MAC address of the first "computer" (or router) after the modem as the address they keep in their database (at least that's what my last 3 cable providers have done). That's one of the reasons many home routers allow one to override the hardwired MAC address, so that one can make it look like the computer the network was originally "provisioned" for. Thus, I wouldn't change the routers MAC address either.

However, the key point of all of this, is that if you want your postings/email to come from a different address, then do that. Use a different way of injecting your eamil/news into the web rather than simply posting from your home. However, don't try to achieve that by fiddling with your local computers IP address. Wrong solution to the problem.

Hope this helps,

-Chris

***************************************************************************** Chris Clark Internet : snipped-for-privacy@world.std.com Compiler Resources, Inc. Web Site : 23 Bailey Rd voice : (508) 435-5016 Berlin, MA 01503 USA fax : (978) 838-0263 (24 hours)

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Hi Dana,

Even though Chris didn't offer a viable solution that was easier or less expensive than simply rebooting the router each morning ...

He DID supply a thoughtful and comprehensive explanation of why people are so completely against me trying to force my router to dial into the PPPoE connection upon demand in order to not have the same IP address broadcast to everyone on every posting I provide.

We both could tell, just from his speech, that he was an educated intelligent person who had an opinion on the matter which he courteously supplied ... and which I appreciate ... as I need his (and your) help in order to resolve my technical dilemma.

Thank you all for your very kind help ... I hope (after all this), we finally do figure out how to get the router to dial into the DHCP PPPoE account on demand!

Well, it seems you have solved your problem. Whether you can automate that solution is another question. I have a "similar" problem, that I use a slightly different solution to, and which may guide you to a better solution. Sometimes my modem gets stuck and needs to be rebooted (and when that happens, you need to power it and the router off). Therefore, I put the modem on a surge protect (power strip) with a convenient button right below my screen. If things get stuck, I trun it off, wait for 30 seconds and turn it back on. Viola.

Now, you can also get things (power controllers) like that, where your computer can send commands to turn the thing off-and-on (often called X10 devices). I don't know much about them, but I bet you could get one of those to power your router and/or modem and thus have your computer turn the router off and on once per night and then check the ip address and do it again, until it got a new one. Now, your shower-stall has a changing IP address.

I still don't think anyone is ever going to look at your IP address, but I'm pretty much on the opposite end of paranoid, despite having closely know people whose identities were stolen--and that's because I'm pretty certain that their identities were not stolen by using the same name over and over again, but by other forms of carelessness.

I lock my car when I go to work or the mall, but not when it is at home in my garage, even though there is "only" an electric garage door opener protecting it there. My wife locks her car even at home. That helps her sleep better.

Hope this helps,

-Chris

***************************************************************************** Chris Clark Internet : snipped-for-privacy@world.std.com Compiler Resources, Inc. Web Site : 23 Bailey Rd voice : (508) 435-5016 Berlin, MA 01503 USA fax : (978) 838-0263 (24 hours)

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It is not that people do not want to help, it is the issue that the solution you are looking for, will really not help you in your goal. Changing your IP or MAC address on your computer hooked to the DSL connection you change will not add to your privacy. As Chris said, using Unix/Linux (and even windows, just takes a lot more work), and bypassing an ISP (in other words you directly connect to the internet), make it a lot easier to hide your identity from those looking. You would still not be invisible, but it would take more work to find out who you are.

For you to achieve your goal of posting in privacy on the internet, you will have to pay a service provider that offers that service. What they do is they do not forward your headers (your nntp posting host line, etc) and instead use theirs, that basically hides where you post from. Or you can get a linux OS and a news reader that allows you to modify your headers. But then to really hide yourself you would have to read up on the NNTP RFC

another post you mentioned ROI, well changing your IP and MAC in this situation does not give you a decent ROI, instead it is more like you bought some tap water from a snake oil salesmen. You keep going back to you want your router to reconnect via your PPOE to get a new IP address. Well that IP address will never be yours to begin with. If someone searches that IP address, they will find it belongs to your ISP. They might get close to your geographical area, but that is about it. If people want to search through the news groups to find your posts, there are more ways to do that than just using the IP address or NNTP posting host. So if your goal is to be able to post anonymously on the newsgroups, pay the

20 to 30 dollars some providers charge for that service, or use an OS and news client that will allow you to manipulate your headers. Another way to remain semi anon, is to post via google groups, I hate saying that as I find the interface for google groups to be very lacking in functionality.

Hi Chris,

Wow again. You are obviously tuned to the realities here. Thank you again for being cogent and coherent.

I know I will accomplish the desired task (which is simply to change the IP address nightly automagically with even less effort than I do today) and with your help, I may soon be able to (and that of kingthorin, Dana, Duane, etc.).

This is a worthwhile task as once set up, there is absolutely no additional effort and a measurable gain (for me, but, not for most of you as you don't have this problem so you don't see the advantages).

All it takes is understanding the system.

Yet, for some strange reason, we're still "discussing" the why so, to give you the courtesy you extended to me, I'll briefly highlight where we agree and disagree below ...

Yes. I learned that from this thread that it was pointless to try to change my software or my software settings as the ISP always uses my DHCP assigned IP address as my public NNTP posting host. Sigh. I was wasting my time changing newsreaders. Thank you all for helping me come to that conclusion.

This thread is all about the former and not about the latter. Thank you all for helping me find an ISP-specific solution to my particular dilemma (which most of you do not have).

Yes. I learned this from most of you on this thread. I appreciate you informing me of this as I didn't realize that the users' assigned IP address wasn't broadcast to the while world on every post for most users. It just is broadcast on all MY posts! I now understand this better, thanks to all of you.

Huh? You want the same IP address for years? I guess that's fine if you're running a web server or an ftp account. But, why not just use the same identifying name and email address (however bogus) if you want people to reach you via the usenet nntp newsgroups?

Even if you are running a web server ... isn't the "domain name" sufficient for people to reach you over the years? I don't see anything wrong with a constant IP address in this situation ... but why is a constant IP address for years a requirement?

In fact, 90% of the posters here say the IP address is irrelevant! So, why do you require the same IP address (which is the real topic here) for years? This confuses me.

Yes. We agree. I want a different IP address each day attached to my posts. I can keep the same bogus name and email address (I used to use my real name and address but spammers long ago put an end to that).

Again, you're proving my point (I know you understood). The IP address isn't what "connects" me to the users. Heck, you've been conversing with me and I've been changing my IP address every day so far. It hasn't stopped this conversation (some wish it would though ... :)

So have I. I have learned how to get hotmail accounts, for example, in the first pass, almost every time. (Most people don't know Yak.)

I agree. Time and time (and time) again, I have said that all I am looking for is a ROI on the ability to not have my assigned IP address plastered all over the Internet, the same IP address day after day.

Currently I accomplish that task by rebooting the router. If this was a hugely beneficial thing, I wouldn't mind. But, it's just one small step. So, THAT is why I'm trying to automate that one small step. To improve the ROI by lowering the I.

If my experiment (kindly suggested in this newsgroup) of changing the router settings to dial into the PPPoE account on demand, finally works tonight, we'll be done!

I fully agree. You might not be amazed at what I can find out about you in about two minutes if your address you posted is actually valid - but many others might be.

Not only can I find out all about you, but all about your neighbors and their kin. And the layout of your and their house, how many bedrooms, square feet, when and how much you bought it, and a photo of your back yard, and, given a few hours, your automobile license plate, where you work, social security death benefits of your next of kin, photos of your kids at school, yada yada yada.

This question was never about that.

Understand the whole "husband" thing was merely a made-up example to give the honest answer to the many questions of "why" without actually giving out any real private information. Does anyone really think any of the information in my post, other than the obvious technical data, is real?

End result ... no need to worry about my "husband" ... whomever he may be.

Now we're getting to the meat of the issue! Your whole discussion here was enlightening. It didn't solve the problem; but it helped greatly to understand the situation and the interesting perspective of the ISP.

Yep. Both happen all the time. Even more so now that I've set the router to PPPoE in on demand after a fifteen-minute idle time.

Hmmmm... I never even thought about changing the MAC address of the modem ... hmmmm... :)

Too late. I changed the router's MAC address multiple times already since the start of this thread while experimenting on the effects. My ISP hasn't booted me off yet but there have been no other effects to date.

Here, in your final point, we must agree to disagree. Currently, the only cost of changing the address that associates me with every post is I have to manually unplug and replug my router.

If the settings recommended by this newsgroup are correct, I won't even have to do that tomorrow.

So, basically for free (once the settings work automatically), I believe it is additive to my privacy (in a way that is greater than the investment, which, over time, approaches zero).

What's wrong with a bunch of little privacy steps, each one of which, over time, approaches an investment of zero yet which provides, over time, a constant additive benefit - this just being one of them?

Been there. Done that. In my case, google also uses my assigned IP address as the NNTP posting host. ...

Hi Dana,

I do very much appreciate your help. Can we just agree to disagree and move on to the technical question?

Why? Because most people who opined are NOT in the same situation as I am. They obviously did not put themselves in my shower slippers. Some even seemed shocked that my assigned IP address was broadcast on every one of my usenet nntp posts because theirs wasn't.

Even so, we did discuss some good issues though.

I, for one, DID LEARN from this discussion that my changing of my computer MAC was pointless (in most cases, but, not in the public hotspot case) and for that I THANK YOU all heartily for edifying me. I do realize the MAC changes will NOT be at all additive to privacy and aren't even worth the price of the free software that I used to change the MAC address.

And, I think some of you learned of the tattletale bit on the MAC address (although we're waiting for confirmation of same).

I also learned of router settings to keep the connection alive upon demand; and, I learned that the PC IP address (and MAC) were the wrong focus.

For all this I thank you all!

I think we can just agree to disagree (actually, some of you actually understand my dilemma and do agree with me so that is gratifying even though I am trying to keep emotions out of this ... and paranoia :)

Thank you all ... I'll try to concentrate on the one remaining question which is how to get the router to re-establish the PPPoE connection as automatically as possible when the modem is powered back on in the morning.

your Modem has a "MAC address" that they use.

Try WPA instead.

Yours, VB.

It would be simpler to use a public news server that puts its IP address in that line, wouldn't it? The tracking would still be there, but into a public mass.

I think there were a lot of reasons why different people were down on the idea. Mostly because it provides no protection at the time. It is more like a doubleclick cookie. Over time, tracking the IP address could provide a trail of crumbs. If that pile of crumbs belongs to " snipped-for-privacy@isp.com" it isn't so helpful, but if some of the postings from

123.45.67.89 contain personally recognizable information, and none contain dissuading information, an identity for all of them can be inferred.

In the case of the OP, it does seem to be a pacbell.net dsl IP. That's a cookie that I might rather avoid, but then I have my .sig with my name... Aside from Usenet postings, that IP address would be a useful part of various web sites' collection activities.

That's just hardware. The router should see the PPoE connection as soon as your link is up. Once the little lights on the modem have stopped flashing, you should be connected. If you turn the router off at night too, you should probably power it up first, although, now that I think about it, it really shouldn't matter.

Hi Volker Birk,

Actually, I have a question about WPA encryption ... which I'll ask here, at the risk of breaking OT rules ...

I am confused with the OPTIONS that I should select when I set up wireless encryption for my simple (3 machine) home network behind the linksys wireless G firewall router.

My software encryption choices (WinXP SP2) are: - Open, Shared, WPA, WPA-PSK I chose WPA but only because I didn't know which to choose. Would you have chosen WPA-PSK instead?

Again on the WinXP side, there were "DATA ENCRYPTION" options of: - AES, TKIP I chose TKIP arbitrarily but again, only because I didn't know what to chose. The setup worked so I left it at that. But, what would YOU have chosen?

Likewise, on the ROUTER side, I have to set the corresponding SECURITY MODE = WPA But available options were WPA Personal, WPA Enterprise, WPA2 Personal, WPA2 Enterprise, Radius, WEP, Disabled. Given these options ... what would you have chosen?

Also, on the ROUTER side, there were "WPA ALGORITHMS" of

- TKIP, AES which again, I set according to what was on the WinXP side.

Given this, I learned (the hard way having tried to set the router initially at Radius but not knowing what to do thereafter, that the process is something like this:

1. Go to the PC to see what the PC has available.
2. In fact, go to all your PCs as you have to use what is available on all!
3. Choose the lowest common denominator (in my case, wireless G)

1. Then go to the PC and choose the encryption type (I chose WPA but maybe another option is more secure?)

1. Choose a data encryption option (I chose TKIP but maybe AES is more secure?)
2. Choose a pass phrase (e.g., "I'm dreaming of a white christmas")

1. Then, on the router side, choose the same encryption type.

1. Choose the same data encryption type.
2. Type in the same pass phrase (no, that wasn't really my pass phrase).

Basically, I am wondering out loud if I chose the correct (read most secure) options ... although given that tempest warning, I wonder if it really matters in the end. Note: Many of my neighbors have wireless (there must be six or seven always in my view wireless networks screen.)

No, I want my posts to all be linked, so I use the same host/user id on all of them (to the extent to which that is possible). It turns out, that my method of doing so, also happens to give them all the same NNTP posting host IP (or roughly the same one), or probably does so; the newsreader software I use doesn't by default show the NNTP posting host, so I've never looked. However, since I know that the particular ISP I use has a specific machine and IP address set up as their host for each function (i.e. there used to be a machine named ftp.world.std.com at a specific IP address that was the FTP server), I would be surprised if NNTP host IP weren't constant.

I know that one of the addresses to that host is 192.74.137.5 (that's the one that accepts ssh connections), because I use that to access that host when I'm behind a firewall that doesn't know how to do the name lookup properly, and I need to reach the site by IP address. So, to answer your question round-aboutly, yes, I do want the address to be constant over long periods of time, so that I can find the site, using information I remember. Other than that, I don't care about IP addresses. They are really like numbers on mailboxes. If you see the name of the box, you probably don't care about the number. If you know the number, you don't have to remember the name. (And if you want something more private, you get a mailbox at the post office, rather than having it delivered to your home, but that point has been made to death.)

If I could (easily and cheaply) get an accessible permanent IP address for my home machine, I would. Then I could use ssh (and rdp) to my home machine, and that would make my life more convenient, which is the whole point of IP addresses. However, just as spammers keep you from using your real email address, hackers keep me from letting outside traffic onto my home net. And without the ability to get past my firewall, having the firewall at a known address does me no good. I don't even know what my cable provider calls my home network, because there is no use for that information, you can't send traffic to it (and get past the firewall).

Again, this has nothing to do with your anonymity concerns. Hopefully, it gives you a better picture of IP addresses and what they are for, and why when we thought you wanted security, we said changing it wouldn't help.

I'm still not certain that changing it helps you anaonymity by very much. Have you searched to see how many postings other than your own have come from the same IP address(es)? If all the posting associated with your IP addresses come from you, then perhaps your concern is valid. If you are merely one of many, then changing your IP address is not likely to be a benefit.

Note if you are the only one posting with some specific IP addresses, even if you can get new ones, you still may be the only one posting from that set--your ISP doesn't have an infinite set of addresses it can hand to you. (In fact, it is the smallness of the set, that causes the ISP to hand you new ones. They don't have enough IP addresses to cover all their customers. If they did, they would just hand out static IP addresses, like the IP address for world.std.com above.) Thus, you may find all your postings, even with new IP addresses, come from a small set of IP addresses that no one else ever posts from.

Does this help explain that even if the I is small, so may be the R in the ROI equation? To be anonymous, there must be someone else who looks similar enough that you can plasuibly say, it wasn't me, it was him. To be truly anonymous, there must be many others like that.

The point is I don't want you getting a false sense of security. You may still not be as anonymous as you hope.

Hope this helps,

-Chris

***************************************************************************** Chris Clark Internet : snipped-for-privacy@world.std.com Compiler Resources, Inc. Web Site : 23 Bailey Rd voice : (508) 435-5016 Berlin, MA 01503 USA fax : (978) 838-0263 (24 hours)

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In a very simple network: yes.

AES.

Most likely: WPA2 Personal (if this means PSK).

Yours, VB.

Hi Chris Clark.

You must be an amazing guy!

More good points in your yet again well thought out response. I'm amazed you have taught me something for the third time ... (much of what has been said up 'till now has been repeats of the same thing).

I must admit, despite the fact I said previosly any script kiddie could write the program, I don't have the facilities (nor inclination) to spit out all the archived nntp messages on google to then search the headers for my NNTP posting host to then compare to see how often my unique header shows up.

Which, in a way, makes your (and others') point in that it's just not worth the effort. Yes. Unless that program were written by someone (it probably has been written ... we just don't know about it).

Once the program is written, then it would be trivial to do what you suggested I try.

This isn't too off topic to ask:

RELATED QUESTION: Does anyone know of a freeware program, already written, that will search archived google posts (given a start/stop date) to spit out those posts which have a given NNTP posting host?

Note: Please no wisecracks saying "google" (as google does NOT apparently index the NNTP posting host as far as my tests can tell).

may want to have a look at what they say ?

Hi idl, Yes. Very interesting

I just realized from reading that web page that my IP address is also saved by every web site I visit so (if they wanted to), folks would build a database of my actions even though I delete my cookies automatically using appropriate browser settings.

So, if web sites can track my IP address (and I believe they can), this is yet another reason that changing the IP address is additive to privacy.

Or, did I read that TOR web site wrong?

Which is why I mentioned the proxy server

And again, since you are on a ISP type system, that IP address is registered to your ISP not you. For you to remain anon you would need to use a proxy server, or something along the lines of tor or onion routing. And they found out that there is an issue with onion routing, in when you use an application like windows media player, once you establish a connection to view something over the net using the media player, it bypasses the onion routing and makes a direct connection.

Hi Dana, Yes, in this case, it's a good point to reiterate that the ISP is the registered "owner" of the IP address temporarily "assigned" to me. The longer that temporary period is, the more the web sites can associate the IP address specifically to me (and vice versa). But, even if I held the IP address for two years, I agree, it still would be hard for web sites to ascertain much useful information about me from that analysis.

It is more important that my posts to one newsgroup not be associated with my posts to another newsgroup (or even within a single newsgroup on occasion).

Thanks for the reminder. In this circumstance, it was warranted in order to prevent me from going off on a tangent in the wrong direction, privacy wise.

Ah, interesting. I had read the posted tor web site page you guys referred to in this thread but I didn't understand it at all. Now I see that some programs, like Adobe Acrobat (not the free reader but the thing that writes PDFs creating a single PDF from an entire web site) & Real Player, bypass the tor onions once they establish a connection to the server.

Oh my. The amount one has to know in order to have privacy on the Internet is astounding. I guess "privacy on the Internet" is an oxymoron as someone posited in this thread!