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

1) You probably cannot change the important information that allows your ISP to know who you are, e.g. your MAC address, because if you do your ISP will not know that your computer is yours and not let you onto the net at all. Your ISP knows which customers are paying it and only lets those customers users its facilities. Trying to protect your IP at your home is a losing proposition.

2) If you go to a hotspot, you can probably spoof your mac address and still be let onto the net (the hotspot vendor won't care, because they are providing the service for "free") and you will probably get a unique IP address (if you don't always go to the same hotspot).

3) If you want to send anonymous emails and postings (such as alt.personals), then you probably should use the appropriate anonymizing services and/or "free email accounts". Note that there are sites that convert emails into postings, so you can email from such free accounts and still post into newsgroups. If you want to be paranoid about that, use such accounts only from hotspots.

However, seriously consider your motivations for being hurtful. It's really poor behavior. Are you really proud that you insulted some woman who is now overweight that used to call you Twiggy? Personally, I would find such behavior worse than the people who send me spam. So, yes, you are abusing the system when you use anonymity to do that.

4) Don't worry so much about your privacy at home. "We wouldn't care what others thought about us, if we realized how seldom they do." Your kids probably aren't that interested in your internet habits. Moreover, the stuff which you should be embarrassed about, they probably already know, since most of the important things about us are things we can't hide at all. You just told the world that you were willing to spite someone because they insulted you long ago--I suspect that people who know you already knew that about you.

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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There's no such thing.

cu

59cobalt

Neither are any other sources, especially within Academia. lol

Like nothing is faster than the speed of light (Albert Einstein believed this BS too), but gravity definitely is. Thus we live in a world of BS! :(

At least in the UK, this is bollocks. Even if its true for phone numbers it categorically is NOT true for IP addresses. You really really need to learn about this stuff, instead of watching CSI and imagining that fantasy where they websearch some dude from his chatroom handle is for real.

FCOL.

Either you're a fool or a knave, I know not which.

Theoretically, if you had a database of every usenet post ever posted by everyone in the world, you could find all the messages posted from my current IP and look at them. So what? You could also go to google groups and search for me by name, you'd find posts stretching back to

1995. None of this lets you track me down.

Nothing, except you missed out the part where this is any sort of privacy or security risk.

Sure, its harder if you change your handle. The point is you can't do this with an IP address. You can't search usenet for IPs. You can search whois for them but the info isn't specific to you, only to your ISP.

You could of course set up your own newsserver with infinite retention (and a couple of petabytes of diskspace) and capture every message. You could then search for the IP, and determine all the handles you'd used. Again, useless information.

I give up. You are obviously paranoid, and nothing we say will persuade you that you're chasing chimeras. Please do yourself a favour.

No they haven't. They've DISAGREED TOTALLY with that hypothesis.

Please actually try this. Try tracing yourself from your IP. The very best you can get is the town you live in and your ISP. In your case somewhere with an acronym of pltn13.

Agreed. However insisting on idiotic security measures with no benefit is either paranoia or ignorance.

You keep bringing this in as though it was relevant or comparable. Here's a better metaphor:

Are you saying everyone who removes their mailbox and never answers the phone is clinically paranoid? Or that they have a guilty conscience?

yadda yadda. Listing totally unrelated privacy issues is not going to strengthen your case.

No, it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference. For the duration of your connection, your MAC (irrespective of what it was) was linked in the ISP's DHCP database to your IP. If this didn't happen, then no communication could take place between your computer and any servers.

If someone subpoena'ed your ISP, they would provide a list of the MACs that connected from your line, and the IPs the MACs got. But the point is, they need to subpoena your records,and for that they need to show probable cause. How likely is that?

Yes, but so what?

From where? Which database do you plan to extract this from? Which ISP do you know with infinite retention?

Lets be clear here: when you post to usenet it is broadcast public information. You retain copyright, but anyone can read it, at any time, in any location, for any purpose. If you find it creepy that people can gather up your postings, you need to stop posting to public fora. You don't have either the right or the power to control what other people do with public information.

No, utterly different. Snail mail is NOT a broadcast medium, its a private communication.

A better comparison would be with writing a magazine article. You retain copyright, but anyone, anywhere, can read the magazine and if they care to, snip out and keep all your articles forever. If you find that creepy, you have to stop writing for magazines.

Which policy do Internet cafes all over the world use to identify all people who use them? Can I be sure that all of them identify everyone accessing their PCs?

-- Luigi Donatello Asero

?? ???????

"Luigi Donatello Asero" skrev i meddelandet news:6NzZg.20334$ snipped-for-privacy@newsb.telia.net...

Which policy do Internet cafes all over the world use to identify all people who use them? Can I be sure that all of them identify everyone accessing their PCs?

By accessing I meant "making use of"

-- Luigi Donatello Asero

?? ???????

Another poor comparison. A firewall would be like the curtain actually preventing people from looking into your dressing room. Changing your IP --> You just move to another spot over and change there instead. Changing your IP serves no purpose in terms of protection past a good firewall. Without a good firewall then your IP is the least of your problems.

Now just relax, setup some real security if you don't already have some and don't worry about what your IP is. And as I said before: anything someone gets off a newsgroup that you posted was obviously something that you were not concerned about people getting or you wouldn't have posted it to begin with.

Hi Duane,

Yep. I think you're missing something. Either that, or I am. :)

Apparently in your world, the NNTP posting host is the ISP's news server. If that were the case in my world, then the NNTP posting host would remain static as I don't change that (even when I do change it, it wouldn't matter as you'll soon see if you keep your eyes open).

You see, in my world ... unfortunately for me ... the NNTP posting host is apparently my router's IP address. At least that is what seems to show up.

For example, my router currently is telling me that my IP address is "69.110.8.45" based on a "Status" "Router" "IP Address" command in my web browser connected to the router's port 80.

In your world, that wouldn't show up as your NNTP posting host but I suspect that, in my world, that IP address will show up as my NNTP posting host, no matter what actual NNTP posting host I choose out of the scores provided to me by my ISP.

Let me know if I am right or wrong.

-- Aluxe (new IP address)

Hi Dana,

I very much appreciate your helpful tone. And technical sense.

We're peeling the onion here and I, for one, am learning a lot. I hope you are too.

For example, I may be wrong, but, from my experience, no matter which of the dozens of news servers available to me by my ISP that I choose, the NNTP posting host seems to ALWAYS be my router's IP address!

For example, as I proved a moment ago, if I use a web browser to connect to my router and if I go to the "Status" "Router" "IP Address" screen, I see my current router's IP address is "69.110.8.45". That is what shows up as my NNTP Posting Host! Notice my actual NNTP server is NOT what shows up as my NNTP posting host.

To prove that, I just switched from one to another of the dozens of NNTP news servers my ISP provides me. Guess what? I'll betcha my NNTP posting host is still the same as the current IP address of my router (69.110.8.45).

Is 69.110.8.45 still my NNTP posting host in my header above?

Hi I_AM_Raptor,

I do appreciate your honing of our analogies. With analogies, we can communicate. For example, I've shown (I hope) with my basic analogies that not everyone who desires a base modicum of privacy is to be automatically considered overly paranoid.

Everyone is confusing one key point. I am not trying to hide from my ISP by changing my IP address! I agree even before the first word was posted that the IPS knows who I am at all moments (heck, I pay the bill with a check that has my name and address on it). Anyone who insists on repeating that changing the IP address doesn't hide me from the ISP is just plain off base.

It's sort of like having an (IP) address on your driver license and then changing it. You're never going to hide from the police by changing your address on your driver's license but the local store that wrote it down when you cashed your check now has a harder time casually finding you from a simple (and all too common) database search.

That's all I was trying to do by changing my router's IP address (which turns out to be the IP address attached as the NNTP posting host no matter what I do).

If someone technical here can show me how to CHANGE MY NNTP POSTING HOST, well then, THAT would be an accomplishment worthy of the discussion!

I looked it up. it is indeed the address of the posting client.

Uh. Google Groups

I see my posts dating back to 1990 (some of which I am embarrassed about as they used my maiden name and my young kids don't even know I was previously married).

Luckily I haven't posted using my real name in more than a decade, but, I can still easily find all my alt.personals type posts dating back to the early nineties in about a nanosecond when I was still married to my first husband.

Don't you realize each and every usenet post archived by google has the NNTP posting host and my NNTP posting host uniquely identifies me, whether I like it or not. If I had kept the same IP address, then all those posts can be tied together by my kids and my spouse and by some kook out there (you?).

I just want to post without having a connection to earlier posts that even a grade school child could follow. It's just a little additive privacy that is so simple to accomplish if I could only figure out a software way to tell the router to dial back into the PPPoE connection.

Hi Mark McIntyre,

I'm getting a big frustrated trying to help you.

Why can't you get it into your head that I'm not at all worried about my ISP knowing who I am at every moment. I pay the bill every month to them for Christ sake!

Sorry for the short tone ... but why you assume I'm worried about my ISP knowing who I am makes me worry just a bit about you and your rationality.