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Well my ISP gives out a dynamic IP address each time my DSL modem connects to them, so this tactic only reveals who downloaded what when they were assigned my c
by Santosh83 6y ago
Well my ISP gives out a dynamic IP address each time my DSL modem connects to them, so this tactic only reveals who downloaded what when they were assigned my current IP. Nothing much can be inferred from this data unless you are the ISP or govt and can tie the IP to the subscriber.
And yes, it shows my IP downloaded the movie Zombieland, which I never did, so it is some other subscriber of the same ISP.
- Tepix 6y agoNowadays internet users on cable often keep the same IP address for weeks if not months. Who knows, your ISP could change its configuration tomorrow and always re-assign the same IP address to you as long as its available. I think the point of this website is to show people that using torrents is far from anonymous and invisible.
- easterncalculus 6y agoExactly, I posted the title as it's the link of the site and admittedly salacious enough to click, but I don't (and I'm sure the site owners don't) want to allege that there's any internet mysticism going on.
- andrewstuart2 6y agoThat, and you should know that there is almost certainly history of who had which IP address when; it's not going to be the same DHCP server running on your small router. If you download something, get a new IP, and the ISP gets a complaint for your old IP, they have that data and may be obligated legally to do something about it.
- larntz 6y agoIn the long long ago I worked at a small regional ISP. We offered dial-up and dsl. Users were assigned whatever IP was available when they connected, and this was logged (including disconnect time). So, it was very easy to search the logs and see who was using an IP at a given time in the past (assuming we still had the logs).
- londons_explore 6y agoI would pay extra for an ISP who only kept those logs say 1 hour. 1 hour should be plenty to identify who is currently running some network attack, and arguably an ISP doesn't have a legit reason for keeping private data longer than necessary to be an ISP under the GDPR .
- DuskStar 6y agoThat would require you to have a choice of ISPs...
- pathseeker 6y agoI wonder if there are any government requirements here for people operating ISPs. Does anyone have any insight into the time range that is required to keep these logs (if there is one)?
- eloisant 6y agoIn France it's one year.
- gog 6y agoYes there is, at least in EU, not sure for how long do they have to keep the logs.
- Luff 6y agoEU: According to a directive passed 2006, a minimum of six months and at most 24 months. But that directive was ruled invalid and anulled in 2014. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive
- razakel 6y agoEarlier this year there was a case where someone was accessing illegal stuff (as in, the sort of stuff that does warrant police kicking their door down at 4am) using public WiFi. Except the ISP had forgotten to take into account daylight savings time and given the police the wrong customer's details. Oops.
- ivanovb 6y agoMy IP hasn't changed in about a year, although it is supposed to be dynamic. On the other hand I use extensively a torrent tracker and the site shows nothing.
- senectus1 6y agoMine changes every few weeks. I found it amusing to see that the OP web link stops showing what my IP has been downloading at the same time that I got the IP only about a week ago.
- smichel17 6y agoIt'll usually change if you power cycle your modem.
- reportgunner 6y agoWhe website has to "know" the torrents you downloaded. If you are downloading obscure or non-english stuff chances are they don't have the torrent and it won't show up on the list.
- ktm5j 6y agoMy modem has had the same IP for nearly 10 years now! It's the same even after several moves, one to a new county. Super convenient, but that's the nicest thing I have to say about Comcast. Boy I wish there were other options.
- proverbialbunny 6y agoYep, Comcast ties your modem's mac address to an IP address. However, if your modem is off long enough for a new user in your area to need a new IP address, they'll snatch up yours. Also, 10 years? I guess DOCSIS 3.0 has been around that long. That's pretty impressive.
- ktm5j 6y agoI recently got a docsis 3.1 modem, you have to call and activate the MAC. They just used the same IP, conveniently enough.
- proverbialbunny 6y agoIt's probably because it needed an IP and the modem that was turned off, leaving an IP open was your old one. That or they changed their system. The odds historically have been low getting the same IP.
- Sohcahtoa82 6y agoYup. I had the same IP address for the entire 3 years I lived in an apartment. Even telling my router to release and renew the IP would still give me the same IP. Only when I moved to a new house (and still used the same ISP) did my IP change.
- svnpenn 6y agohttps://github.com/sietseringers/MACAddressTool https://github.com/sietseringers/MACAddressTool
- goatsi 6y agoThat's only for Windows, you would need to change the MAC address on the router WAN port for the ISP to notice.
- svnpenn 6y agoNot sure what you are talking about, I have been using this for years to generate new IPs.
- goatsi 6y agoPrivate IPs on local networks (192.168.0.0/16, etc), or globally routed IPs assigned from your ISPs netblock?
- svnpenn 6y agoIP assigned from ISP
- exikyut 6y agoI'm mildly curious how your ISP works then. Like the other commenter said, this tool will change your Windows device's MAC, not the modem's. To be clear, there's your device's MAC, the Wi-Fi AP's MAC and the modem's WAN-facing MAC. (Integrated Wi-Fi router/modem combos obviously have both.) If this tool is successfully getting you new public IP addresses, something VERY weird is going on with your (probably integrated) modem.
- wil421 6y agoComcast assigns you an IP based on the MAC address of your modem and the only way to change it is to get a new modem. When I had AT&T it could change at anytime.
- lucisferre 6y agoYeah back when there was that company that used to send threatening emails through ISP companies I used to get emails from my ISP claiming I downloaded various shows and movies I had never seen. It was a completely pointless farce and fraud.
- monocasa 6y agoI checked this from a phone who's provider NATs IPV4. People be wild on their mobile connections. I don't torrent on mobile only because the bandwidth will get me throttled, but god damn someone on my NAT has some filthy habits.
- alias_neo 6y agoSomeone sharing mine really enjoys some BBC "documentaries" on mobile, and I don't mean the broadcasting corporation.
- nroets 6y agoI'm on LTE. The carrier grade NAT implementation of my ISP may use a different public IP address for each TCP connection I make. The webserver of my bank sees it as a hack and will then log me out. Fortunately my ISP also has an APN when I'm allocated my own IP.
- pier25 6y agoI don't know but I imagine ISPs keep a record of which IPs they have assigned to which modems, no?
- Jolter 6y agoMost do. In some jurisdictions they are legally required to.
- chrismorgan 6y agoWhere I am currently in India, the ISP does provider-level NAT: multiple customers are on the same IPv4 address. No idea how many. This thing is showing around a dozen movies (a mixture of English and local language, plus it looks like someone wants to become a web developer) being downloaded per day, and I’m confident none of them are coming from the local network I’m attached to. This NAT is also a right pain, because there are always at least one or two strains of malware running on the address, so that it’s always on at least one or two blacklists, which causes the occasional problem. As an example, earlier today I couldn’t access ConvertKit’s Terms of Service page at all because Wordfence didn’t like my IP address. (But it only blocked access to that one page. Weird.) It was worse when I was here 3–4 years ago: at that time, the IP address was on most of the blacklists, and each and every site protected by Cloudflare would complain and require a CAPTCHA before it would let you in. (Though at least it would let you in, unlike Wordfence today.) It’s times like that when you realise viscerally just how much of the internet is behind Cloudflare. Back in 2012, the same ISP was intercepting all DNS (!) and serving OpenDNS with the stupid give-you-a-search-page-instead-of-an-NXDOMAIN-response thing that they had back then, forcibly enabled. Hopefully the copy of “Avast Premium Security 20.2.2401 (Build 20.2.5130) Final + Serial” someone downloaded will help them clear the malware out, rather than make things worse.
- aasasd 6y agoIndeed, not only I'm seeing somebody else's pretty mediocre taste, but I have no idea of my previous ips so can't check real accuracy. However, what does impress me is that somebody downloaded multiple movies and games a day, with books and tailoring instructions thrown in. Dunno if the site counts seeding torrents too, but if not—someone is very busy just consuming all that.
- reportgunner 6y agoPerhaps it was a whole family: - games for parent 1 - movies for kids - tailoring instruction for parent 2
- steve_adams_86 6y agoLikewise, this says I downloaded 3 movies I've never heard of.
- clashmeifyoucan 6y agoyeah at first I thought this was a prank and it just randomly shows you a lot of porn and movies and games and stuff (I mean who torrents porn?). Now I am not sure if other people on my ISP have bad taste / are dumb or a combination of both.