People are often concerned about their privacy when surfing the Web and many times the significance of IP addresses comes up. Many websites track IP addresses for one reason or another and some people worry that those websites are somehow invading their privacy and tracking their personal information. The courts have recently looked at this issue, however, and a federal judge has ruled that IP addresses are not personally identifiable.
Okay, so one judge’s decision may not comfort some people out there who still think IP addresses are some kind of sacred piece of information that shouldn’t be stored or tracked. As such, perhaps it’d be best to explain what an IP address really is, since it’s often misrepresented. Some like to claim that an IP address is a computer’s social security number – which isn’t exactly accurate. You see, an IP address really only identifies a network. For instance, at the dwellingLIVE corporate office, we have a single IP address that is shared by dozens of computers via a router. Furthermore, many networks may get different IP addresses each time they turn on their computer depending on their internet service provider (ISP). Combine those facts with the reality that an IP address isn’t connected to your name, address, phone, email, or any other personally identifiable information and hopefully you’ll start to see that storing IP addresses shouldn’t be scary.
So why exactly do many websites store and track their visitors’ IP addresses? Well, probably the primary reason is for reporting and visitor stats. By connecting an IP address with basic Web traffic stats, website operators can view various trends in traffic (such as what browsers people use, screen resolutions, popular pages, etc.). It may seem trivial to have that information, but it allows Web developers to determine how best to present their site to their visitors as well as how to go about testing new features and services.
Another big reason websites keep track of IP addresses, is to use them to help battle against potentially malicious website visitors. An example is that if a “bot” tries to bring down a Web server by visiting it thousands of times a minute, site operators and react by blocking that bot’s IP address so that it won’t be able to access the site any longer. Another example is that if a person misuses the site in some way (such as uploading files or posting content that violate the site’s terms of use, or access anther user’s account that they shouldn’t have) then the site operator can block the IP address as well as submit it to local authorities if required.
Hopefully that clears things up a bit and sheds some light onto the reasoning behind tracking IP addresses. Also, if you’d like dwellingLIVE’s IP address, you’re more than happy to look it up for yourself any time. Just head over to a tool like http://www.lookupserver.com/, and enter in “dwellinglive.com” (without quotes) and you’ll get the current IP address of our server.
