On Aug 3, 2011, at 6:55 AM, Jay Ashworth wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mikael Abrahamsson" <swmike@swm.pp.se>
On Wed, 3 Aug 2011, Owen DeLong wrote:
Europe is a little odd in that way, especially DE and NO in that there seems to be this weird FUD running around claiming that static addresses are in some way more antithetical to privacy.
Yes, I agree. I know people who choose provider based on the availability of static addresses, I know very few who avoid static address ISPs because of this fact.
FUD indeed.
You guys aren't *near* paranoid enough. :-)
If the ISP
a) Assigns dynamic addresses to customers, and b) changes those IPs on a relatively short scale (days)
then
c) outside parties *who are not the ISP or an LEO* will have a relatively harder time tying together two visits solely by the IP address.
ROFL... Yeah, right... Because the MAC suffix won't do anything.
While this isn't "privacy", per se, that "making harder" is at least somewhat useful to a client in reducing the odds that such non-ISP/LEO parties will be unable to tie their visits, assuming they've controlled the items they *can* control (cookies, flash cookies, etc).
Which is something, what, 1% of people probably even know how to do, let alone practice on a regular basis.
Imperfect security != no security, *as long as you know where the holes are*.
If people want this, they can use RFC-4193 to just about the same effect. The ISP modifying the prefix regularly simply doesn't do much. Owen