EU Official: IP Is Personal

[HardOCP News]

So the head of the European Union's group of data privacy regulators says that your IP address should be regarded as personal data. What do you think? Is this guy onto something or just on something?

Germany's data protection commissioner, Peter Scharr, leads the EU group preparing a report on how well the privacy policies of Internet search engines operated by Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and others comply with EU privacy law. He told a European Parliament hearing on online data protection that when someone is identified by an IP, or Internet protocol, address "then it has to be regarded as personal data."

 

[the-one1]

That's like saying your license plate on your car is personal data. Just like an IP, it will change throughout your life.

 

[Serpreme]

Yeah or like saying your social security number is personal.
That'll change through your life.

 

[VanQuiShEr]

I disagree with ^
Having Google, Microsoft, Yahoo etc. monitoring you is like having someone sniff thru your mailbox. Whether they read it or not, it doesn't matter because they know where you shop and where you been.

 

[Serpreme]

Not like people cant track you anywhere else through anything else if they really wanted too.
But i dont agree with making a IP personal. It only makes us more dependant on something that can easily be smurfed.

 

[General Crespin]

If they are tracking a specific IP address and associating purchases, sites visited, so on and so forth, with that IP, it may not be personal, as it is possible to change your IP address (or even make it whatever you want? Is it possible to have whatever IP you want appear to the WWW, similar to setting a static IP for your LAN?), but it is possible to track you with it, so it may not be personal, but it sure isn't anonymous.

 

[cliche]

Not like people cant track you anywhere else through anything else if they really wanted too.
But i dont agree with making a IP personal. It only makes us more dependant on something that can easily be smurfed.

I agree entirely

 

[Kristofff]

Not like people cant track you anywhere else through anything else if they really wanted too.
But i dont agree with making a IP personal. It only makes us more dependant on something that can easily be smurfed.

Hell, why make anything personal if you can be tracked in some way for form? Might as well just put registered GPS system on all our cars and phones, as well as key loggers and trackers on our pcs, and hook them all up to a central database easily accessible to anyone who could track us in any other way. Why be dependent on anything, AMIRIGHT?

 

[Godlyfrog]

Not like people cant track you anywhere else through anything else if they really wanted too.
But i dont agree with making a IP personal. It only makes us more dependant on something that can easily be smurfed.

I don't think they meant that everyone would be assigned an IP, merely that when it came to tracking IPs, it should be considered personal information, not public information, like it is now.

 

[[Tripod]MajorPayne]

It's the same deal as a phone number. With a simple, free reverse lookup on a phone number, someone can discover the name and address of the payee on that phone. Doesn't guarantee that that's the person who made the call, just like an IP address only describes the machine's location itself, not necessarily the person at the keyboard.

It's still personal data, but not as personal as your SSN. You can't apply for a credit card with just a phone number, you can't get a loan with just your IP address. It's only personal when people start tracking where you've been, it doesn't mean someone can "steal" it and pretend to be you.

 

[w1retap]

Hell, why make anything personal if you can be tracked in some way for form? Might as well just put registered GPS system on all our cars and phones, as well as key loggers and trackers on our pcs, and hook them all up to a central database easily accessible to anyone who could track us in any other way. Why be dependent on anything, AMIRIGHT?

You might want to remove your fingerprints and teeth too.

 

[HOCP4ME]

I disagree with ^
Having Google, Microsoft, Yahoo etc. monitoring you is like having someone sniff thru your mailbox. Whether they read it or not, it doesn't matter because they know where you shop and where you been.

Yeah, but does it really matter? I mean, do I care if Google knows that citizen # 3,145,638 just visited Ebay?

 

[Xipher]

Yeah, but does it really matter? I mean, do I care if Google knows that citizen # 3,145,638 just visited Ebay?

More like do you care if 12.34.56.78 just visited Ebay. Hell for all they know a few hundred different people could be behind that same IP using NAT.

 

[jbzx86]

You guys aren't looking at this from the correct perspective. Think of an IP address as your home address. Sure it changes a lot more for most people than their physical address, but in essence, they are similar. An IP address is your computers virtual address that can be used to track what city that computer is located in. Is your home address personal information? Not the last time I checked. So no, an IP address should definitely NOT be personal.

Also, proxies can be used to redirect your IP and use it as a gateway of sorts. This would register the proxy's IP address at sites rather than your computer's IP. There are very simple ways of masking your IP or even piggy-backing another IP.

Still, if you are being smurfed, just block all incoming ping requests.

 

[Kristofff]

You cannot even try to compare an IP address to a home address. A home address does nothing but show where you live. It does not show what you do and allow your every movement to tracked. Simply trying to compare the two shows how many of you are trying to mitigate this with false analogies.

This is akin to making your exact coordinates on this planet to be not only not private, but easily viewed by anyone, for <insert favorite reasons here>. And even then, that wouldn't expose you as much as your IP address would.

I wouldn't doubt that in the future, with all these bullshit excuses being given by the government for their illegal spying, ISP's constantly trying to inspect our traffic, and technology constantly getting cheaper, that there won't be some law put in place that forces all ISP's to log all your online activity to be archived into databases in case <insert favorite reasons here>.