Internet Privacy / Forum (not Tv Specific) Privacy

[pumper]

my neighbor claims that no information is even remotely private on forums. He claims that all forum posters & surfers are subject to 3rd party monitoring.

(I suggested he post a personal question on a non-thai forum & privacy was why he refused to participate in / visit forums .. )

my question is about the overall internet forum .. not thai visa specifically

I understand that the forum mods have access to everyones IP.

are our IP addresses available to 3rd party snoopers.

On one Thai forum several years ago MY IP address / geographic location was displayed in the 'avatar box' next to MY post .. the IP of others posters was not shown to me.

notstickman's web site has a map showing the geographic location of all his readers

what would it take for computer savvy snoopers to associate a post to an IP?

or a forum reader to an IP ?

[cdnvic]

my neighbor claims that no information is even remotely private on forums. He claims that all forum posters & surfers are subject to 3rd party monitoring.

(I suggested he post a personal question on a non-thai forum & privacy was why he refused to participate in / visit forums .. )

my question is about the overall internet forum .. not thai visa specifically

I understand that the forum mods have access to everyones IP.

are our IP addresses available to 3rd party snoopers.

On one Thai forum several years ago MY IP address / geographic location was displayed in the 'avatar box' next to MY post .. the IP of others posters was not shown to me.

notstickman's web site has a map showing the geographic location of all his readers

what would it take for computer savvy snoopers to associate a post to an IP?

or a forum reader to an IP ?

They would have to compromise an admin/mod account in most cases.

[Crossy]

I agree with Cdnvic, it's not going to be easy to associate a particular post to an IP address without access to a compromised Mod / Admin account.

There are some very clever little files that you can add to your sig / avatar / emails that show the reader his own IP address and ISP (and therefore location), most disconcerting to open a mail or web page and be told where you are So obviously this information is available to the outside world.

I did actually have one of these in my email sig, several corporate customers got so alarmed (they thought I'd hacked their systems somehow) that I removed said item, not even sure where it came from now

Edited July 17, 2007 by Crossy

[cdnvic]

If an admin stupidly allows scripts to be run by regular members then they can put counters in their signatures that will track IPs of people reading their posts, but this can still not track the IP related to any certain post.

[Jai Dee]

They would have to compromise an admin/mod account in most cases.

Correct.

You can check your own IP here.

[opalhort]

They would have to compromise an admin/mod account in most cases.

Correct.

You can check your own IP here.

When I check my IP using above link it gives me one belonging to my ISP (TRUE) with location of the TRUE office. IP=203.144.*.*

but my router tells my that my IP address is 58.9.*.*

Which IP address can be seen to the outside world?

opalhort

[monty]

Another thing, valid for most countries, is that your IP can only be connected to your person (or the subscriber) by the ISP.

ISP's will normally only release that information to the authorities, and only when these authorities are armed with a signed court order forcing the ISP to release that data!

As Opalhort noticed, a big amount of traffic in Thailand gets routed through proxies owned by the local Thai ISP's, making it look to the outside world that you are posting from the ISP's proxy IP address. Your own IP address can be different altogether!

In such case it would be very difficult for the ISP to trace which one of their subscribers made a certain post when the authorities showed up with the IP address of their own proxy server. They would have to match the exact date and time to the second and trace on their internal logs which subscriber made an HTTP request through their proxy server. I personally think this is impossible due to the amount of such requests being made within a 1 second timeframe!

[autonomous_unit]

The original post asked about "third parties"... what does he really mean by privacy and third party? Is he worried about his neighbor or boss seeing what he would write on a forum? Or the police? Or is he worried about some crank or nutcase on the forum tracking him down to give him a beating because of what he wrote?

If you are in an unprotected wifi hotspot, any other local users could potentially monitor all your forum traffic that is not being encrypted with HTTPS. Even then, they could potentially see which sites you visit. The operator of the wifi hotspot could do even more, depending on how careful you are about using HTTPS (some people won't notice when an HTTPS proxy interposes itself and uses a different certificate than the true destination site). There are very amusing web proxies out there for honeypots and other hotspots to do things like make all the browser images blurry, upside-down, or backwards. This is digging into the traffic at the same level as being able to monitor what someone is writing or reading...

For a site like Thaivisa where traffic is not encrypted, there are potential spots for third party snooping all along the internet path from your PC to the forum web servers. And it is probably foolish to think the forum servers are all that secure, unless you personally trust ALL of the admins and their hosting providers. Of course, I cannot see why you would really care unless you are paranoid... the question to ask yourself is why would anybody go through the bother of trying to intercept your traffic? Does their motivation and available means outweight the effort and cost?

Nobody is secure from a truly determined attack. Paranoia is believing, in spite of the odds, that such an attack is eminent.

[jackspratt]

They would have to compromise an admin/mod account in most cases.

Correct.

You can check your own IP here.

But don't rely on it.

I checked for my IP, and it shows the wrong location (Brisbane, Qld) and ISP (DATA COMMUNICATION BUSINESS GROUP CHUNGHWA TELECOM CO LTD), whereas I am in Udon Thani, and use TOT.

[taxexile]

checked for my IP, and it shows the wrong location (Brisbane, Qld) and ISP (DATA COMMUNICATION BUSINESS GROUP CHUNGHWA TELECOM CO LTD), whereas I am in Udon Thani, and use TOT.

same here , except i am in hua hin.

[TopDogger]

Which IP address can be seen to the outside world?

Both