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Passionate write up, very well put and beautifully presented. However, I think that worrying about your IP address and encouraging the same as a major "Securit

Passionate write up, very well put and beautifully presented. However, I think that worrying about your IP address and encouraging the same as a major "Security Thing" is missing way more important aspects of IT security. For many people who follow your line of thinking via your blog and say the ads for VPNs and the like, they might feel they have achieved "security" by obfuscating or hiding one small aspect of their on-line life. Online profiling is generally way more detailed than an IP and will include browser finger printing (agent string) and fonts loading, and much much more with some pretty impressive Javascript tricks. I live at 1 Eldonthingie Road, BendInARiverTown, Summersetshire - I have obfuscated that lot quite a bit but not too much that a determined person could work it out and see where I live. Back in the day it would be published in the phone book for all to see. There are way more important security enhancements that you can deploy before you worry about VPNs and that. I only use a VPN when off site and need to get back to the office or home. Today, I was working on a customer site and they have a TLS man in the middle box which buggered up my VPN (OpenVPN on 443/tcp) That costed them an additional four hours of my time at my rate!

kotlin2 4y ago
I disagree. Your IP can group you with at most a few million other people. The bits of entropy needed to identify you is very small if you know the IP.
appleflaxen 4y ago
You are right. But the OP doesn't state anything to the contrary. You are what-abouting a completely sound, thoughtful, and helpful article about one small piece of the privacy puzzle.
user3939382 4y ago
You turn on VPN meanwhile your OS, Adobe CC, Office, etc is busy phoning home with all kinds of fingerprintable if not personally identifiable data. Even Firefox phones home with tons of data at launch and exit with telemetry off. Getting real anonymity online is way more complicated than I think most people realize. Then again maybe that’s fine, it depends on your threat model.
- d11z 4y ago
  I just have been using alternative firewall softwares such as simplewall (Windows) and Little Snitch (Mac). You can configure them such that you are alerted every time any process makes any form of network request, and either temporarily or permanently blacklist/whitelist as well as even have fine-grained control over specific hosts/domains/etc. Really a must have, for me.
  - criddell 4y ago
    Do those firewalls block all network activity? Would a DNS lookup trigger an alert? I had an application that was phoning home and after some digging I found that it was doing so through DNS. It would lookup something like $KEY.some.domain.com and the response would decode to the value.
    - d11z 4y ago
      As far as I can tell it’s any and every network lookup or request. Frankly, ever since I started using them (several years ago) I’ve only been feeling more and more that it may be the only way forward. My data isn’t up for grabs for profiteering/aggregating/snooping on, sorry. EDIT: Your comment made me curious so I will do more due diligence and return with an update. EDIT2: So after not that much investigation--mostly just rereading what's shown on their project page (https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall) -- it confirms my belief that this adequately shields me from any and all networks without my knowledge or consent. In my opinion, it's kind of dystopian that The Industry basically operates on the assumption that most people will in fact just not care, but maybe more would care if it was presented as more of a choice than a concession. Like, I don't mind sharing for the purpose of analytics. I read through privacy policies (is this being an adult?) kind of frequently these days, and as much as I hate to say it, Apple is still probably what I consider the poster child for big tech data privacy, they are doing the absolute bare minimum by clearly and plainly disclosing what data is used for what and how, and it allows my mind some rest. EDIT3: Proof shown here https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall/issues/980 https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall/issues/980
Kiro 4y ago
> Back in the day it would be published in the phone book for all to see. What do you mean with "back in the day"? Is this not common practice anymore? In my country all this data is public information, including your social security number and tax records. The only way to obfuscate it is to get a "protected identity" court order but even then I think it will only hide a small fraction of your PII.
devwastaken 4y ago
Any script kiddie can DOS a residential connection for however long they like. It's a common "attack" people do in games that leak IP's. The culture of internet celebrities is growing significantly with twitch/YouTube streaming. People are dangerous, and will harass and stalk. Swatting is also still very real, it's a common occurrence for major content creators. Yes you should do more, a good VPN is essential if you interact with other people online.

kotlin2 4y ago

I disagree. Your IP can group you with at most a few million other people. The bits of entropy needed to identify you is very small if you know the IP.

appleflaxen 4y ago

You are right. But the OP doesn't state anything to the contrary. You are what-abouting a completely sound, thoughtful, and helpful article about one small piece of the privacy puzzle.

user3939382 4y ago

You turn on VPN meanwhile your OS, Adobe CC, Office, etc is busy phoning home with all kinds of fingerprintable if not personally identifiable data. Even Firefox phones home with tons of data at launch and exit with telemetry off. Getting real anonymity online is way more complicated than I think most people realize. Then again maybe that’s fine, it depends on your threat model.

d11z 4y ago
I just have been using alternative firewall softwares such as simplewall (Windows) and Little Snitch (Mac). You can configure them such that you are alerted every time any process makes any form of network request, and either temporarily or permanently blacklist/whitelist as well as even have fine-grained control over specific hosts/domains/etc. Really a must have, for me.
- criddell 4y ago
  Do those firewalls block all network activity? Would a DNS lookup trigger an alert? I had an application that was phoning home and after some digging I found that it was doing so through DNS. It would lookup something like $KEY.some.domain.com and the response would decode to the value.
  - d11z 4y ago
    As far as I can tell it’s any and every network lookup or request. Frankly, ever since I started using them (several years ago) I’ve only been feeling more and more that it may be the only way forward. My data isn’t up for grabs for profiteering/aggregating/snooping on, sorry. EDIT: Your comment made me curious so I will do more due diligence and return with an update. EDIT2: So after not that much investigation--mostly just rereading what's shown on their project page (https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall) -- it confirms my belief that this adequately shields me from any and all networks without my knowledge or consent. In my opinion, it's kind of dystopian that The Industry basically operates on the assumption that most people will in fact just not care, but maybe more would care if it was presented as more of a choice than a concession. Like, I don't mind sharing for the purpose of analytics. I read through privacy policies (is this being an adult?) kind of frequently these days, and as much as I hate to say it, Apple is still probably what I consider the poster child for big tech data privacy, they are doing the absolute bare minimum by clearly and plainly disclosing what data is used for what and how, and it allows my mind some rest. EDIT3: Proof shown here https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall/issues/980 https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall/issues/980

Kiro 4y ago

> Back in the day it would be published in the phone book for all to see. What do you mean with "back in the day"? Is this not common practice anymore? In my country all this data is public information, including your social security number and tax records. The only way to obfuscate it is to get a "protected identity" court order but even then I think it will only hide a small fraction of your PII.

devwastaken 4y ago

Any script kiddie can DOS a residential connection for however long they like. It's a common "attack" people do in games that leak IP's. The culture of internet celebrities is growing significantly with twitch/YouTube streaming. People are dangerous, and will harass and stalk. Swatting is also still very real, it's a common occurrence for major content creators. Yes you should do more, a good VPN is essential if you interact with other people online.