I think that any data which is considered private is data that you would not want 3rd parties (i.e. not the vendor when shopping online) to have access to.

While Mike makes some valid points as to the inherent public nature of an IP address, I can’t help but to disagree to some extent.

First, it’s unequivocally true that an IP address is required for Internet connectivity and communication. That much remains un-refuted, and with good reason. However, as he alluded, you don’t have the same control over your IP address as you do your phone number or your credit card.

With that, I’d like to posit the following. You don’t have a choice what IP address you’re assigned in most cases, and that IP address can be used to identify you by not only spammers but by hackers. Now of course, no matter how a law attempts to obfuscate your identity, hackers with a sniffer can see it. But I think the point of the EU argument is that government agencies and commercial entities shouldn’t be able to tell who’s visiting a site via their IP address. That makes sense. One doesn’t ASK to be identified by obtaining an address. I, as a consumer, would like to have the knowledge that my identity isn’t available to whomever asks. Much like a home address, it’s how information is delivered to you and you don’t have a choice in the matter. But, if the government and companies such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, et. al., were limited to recording only the first two or three octets of the address, it would limit their ability to identify me as an individual while allowing them to determine country of origin and even as granular as state or ISP.

In the above reader responses, I’ve noticed many misconceptions as to the nature of “Dynamic” IP assignment. DHCP leases are generally awarded to the same client (based on MAC address) if that client requests that IP address within a short period of time after its expiration. The result is a nearly static IP address. The only time it ever changes is if you turn off your computer and during its off time your lease expires. If from the command prompt you type “ipconfig /all”, you’ll notice the lease begin and end times which is usually 1 to 3 days. Also, there are many ways for an ISP to look and see who had that address on a given day so don’t be fooled into thinking that because your IP address changes that you can’t be traced.

But I digress. I DO support the idea of making private an individuals identity with relation to his IP address. That won’t stop hackers, but it might slow down spammers and will certainly stop Uncle Sam from discovering who you are without Warrant. Perhaps it’s time for a 4th Amendment for IP addresses.

Regards,

Tony

I recall a story on TD a few days back about a spammer sueing someone for tracing the emails he was getting back to the aforementioned spammer. Could this be a follow up from that? General advise to the consumer so they don’t find it necessary to follow in the footsteps of the yanks and start sueing people left right and centre for things that aren’t actually illegal?

For whatever reason, the article won’t load for me, but I’ll read it later and post again when I’m better informed of the backstory

The IP address you use is DEFINITELY personal information. In some cases (dynamic IPs), it’s only personal information in conjunction with a specific date/time.

The argument of whether such personal information should be considered private is a different matter.

Many countries in the EU have laws which govern what information may be STORED about individuals. Thus, a web server obviously can use your IP address to send you pages – just like nobody needs permission to use your telephone number to phone you up. However, Data Protection laws impose controls about what personal information can be stored about individuals, as well as which individuals. For instance a company can store information about its customers, but (depending on the laws) cannot store information about people who have no relationship with that company. Similarly, it restricts what information can be shared by different companies or entities.

Thus for instance, when you apply for a job, your prospective employer won’t be able to buy a list of websites you’ve visited in the last 3 months from your ISP, or check whether a female employee has bought pregnancy tests recently.

That’s the theory anyway.

I think that maybe we should really understand what is going on in the UK.
I believe what they they want is for company’s like Goggle, Yahoo and MSN to stop tracking your movements/searches by using the number given to you by your ISP’s.
With that in mind so why should Google and others keep track of your searches for a year and a half on their computers? It’s none of their damn business and the EU agrees.

If that’s your argument, it’s easy to get around. Take the ISP, mangle it in some way so it is no longer the ISP yet still just as unique, slap the new unique number onto the search request and save the record. Not an ISP, but still ‘tracking’ you if the mangling is predicable, ie 127.0.0.1 == foo.

IP address should be the same as home address. Yes, you can give that info to anyone, but you can google-map anyone’s address even if you just type in a random street name and number. But you don’t know who that person is, or who lives there, you just know that address exists. That makes it personal, but personal is user-defined, as opposed to private which is unique to the individual and bound by law that only that person has the right to share/access the information.