Which service are you using to obtain this information? What information are you providing to the service? My IP?!
I really don’t like the possibility of third parties knowing that I’m using this (or any other) site.
The location comes from your IP address and a GeoIP database, and isn’t made available to anyone else. Your IP is provided to every website you visit (as well as the providers of anything loaded in, such as ads), and there’s not too much you can do about that, just by nature of how the internet works.
Since this site doesn’t run ads, and doesn’t allow Facebook’s pixels or similar trackers, nobody else should know that you’re using it. (The IP addresses aren’t sold or provided to anyone else.) However, your ISP can always know what you’re accessing, just by nature. And most sites aren’t as polite as this one: as a general rule, you should assume that any site you’re visiting tracks your actions and provides them to Google, Facebook, and probably others.
If you want to hide your IP address, and/or hide your browsing habits from your ISP, you can use a proxy or a VPN. Tor is an easy one to set up. It’ll make things somewhat slower, but that’s the price of privacy.
2 Likes
Thanks. I know how internet works.
If you are not providing the IP to anyone else (you query a local database) it’s fine for me.
Ahh, okay, I see what you mean.
I believe the database is local, though I’d have to check. If it’s remote, then no information should be provided that can connect you to this particular website.
If a site does the query to some service they know (with much certainty) that some IP is related to the site, I’d say.
Yes, please, check if you’re using a local database.
I just whois’d my registration IP, and it says it’s a Sprint network in New Jersey, thousands of miles away. Likely because I changed my password the last time on my phone which is Virgin Mobile via Sprint.
I don’t think anyone is going to pinpoint your exact residence from your IP without convincing a judge to sign a subpoena to your ISP to reveal your billing address, which should be covered by their privacy policy and usually only happens when there is probable cause due to a crime.
I mean…people have been “swatted” via IP, but that’s because they called 911 and reported a bogus hostage emergency, which is illegal to do. That’s not a specific problem to this specific forum - cases of swatting have happened with info from gaming services and Twitch streaming.
Depending on the situation, there could be more.
For a client I was asked to pinpoint location of an employee over a one week period. Normal answer would be “it can’t be done”. But the employee carried a phone that kept a live connection to their email server so I could “follow the IP path” in the Exchange logs as they connected/disconnected/reconnected between locations. Down to what hotel they stayed in and where they ate dinner…
So not applicable here probably, but not entirely impossible. I understand the reason for the question.
And organizationally, nobody on this site can view your device information except you and Admins.
(Admin staff have additional user-management controls Moderators do not. Admin has the ability to “see” and adjust your profile settings page as you do for account troubleshooting purposes. Admin + Moderators are referred to collectively as “staff”.)
2 Likes