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E.U. Regulator Says IP Addresses Are Personal Data
NewsCloud writes "Germany's data-protection commissioner, Peter Scharr told a European Parliament hearing on online data protection that when someone is identified by an IP, or Internet protocol, address, 'then it has to be regarded as personal data.' Scharr acknowledged that IP addresses for a computer may not always be personal or linked to an individual. If the E.U. rules that IP addresses are personal, then it could regulate the way search engines record this data. According to the article, Google does an incomplete job of anonymizing this data while Microsoft does not record IP addresses for anonymous search."
Because that's today's car analogy for an IP address.
Now bow to your Redmond overlord, miscreants!
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Never really looked at it this way. I think it's become ingrained in us that IP's are a way of tracking instead of a way of communicating. Being able to track them is just a side issue. If we look at an IP as a means of communication then does that not make it private in some way? I don't know exactly how I feel about this but I'd certainly like to have more rights rather than less of them.
Does that mean that if passed, then the RIAA can't use my personal data 'IP' to sue me? TFA was a little short on details of the reprecushions of this.
The only way to check and see if your IP is being kept is by changing the protocol entirely or by checking the company's servers. I'm guessing that not too many companies would appreciate people routinely rooting around, and if something to check if an IP is stored were to be implemented, the protocol would have to be vastly overhauled and it could slow down the internet 80% or more because of the extra time needed to "check."
The bottom line is this is much like the ruling in the US that companies had to keep a record of working memory (which is entirely impossible,) This seems to be more legislators talking about something they know very little about.
Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate the fact that it would make it harder for the ad industry to hunt you down which is always appreciated, I just don't think any reasonable implementation will work.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
I am truly disappointed in this. If IP addresses are a means of communications, wouldn't that be similar to phone numbers?
It shouldn't be any more personal than a phone number is. Whenever someone calls me, I like to log them on my caller ID. I don't see a difference here.
I can't believe what I'm seeing. Is this actually a semi-responsible technology-related decision made by a legislative body?
I'm not saying I necessarily agree with the complete "scrubbing" of Google et al.'s records, as it were, but the classification of an IP address as personally-identifiable information is definitely a positive step towards Internet freedom, and a reasonable expectation of some degree of privacy. At the very least, it gives you a leg to stand on when you find out that some company has been selling your browsing habits to an advertiser.
Unless Microsoft is just lying. How can they be trusted, with their track record?
--
make install -not war
How is an IP address more "personal" than my GPS location at any given point in time? Sure an IP address can be "mine" if I have my own domain etc. This is not usually the case though. Most IP addresses are "owned" by the ISP and assigned to people via DHCP (except for static ones). This is not too much unlike a restaurant reserving tables for a customer, and sometimes reserving a table for a customer for a long time. It doesn't make the table being reserved the customers the customers personal property; the restaurant still owns it--it is no more personal than, well, any other table in an anonymous bar (for example). I can't see how IP addresses can be "personal".
If IP addresses are personal data, who owns 127.0.0.1?
The report isn't released yet. It's from an EU regulator. These guys aren't noted for being particularly sympathetic toward Microsoft. This sort of question is kind of tinfoil-hattish.
Look at the privacy policies of Microsoft and Google. Search them out yourself. Google them, or live search them if you don't want your IP logged. MS's official position on privacy is generally fairly strict, and they consider it a selling point. Google's is less so, and they consider it a non-issue.
If you disbelieve these stated corporate policies, then you really should get in contact with a lawyer and take some action.
With a statement like that I really doubt you'd even believe it coming from your own mother holding a document signed by Bill Gates and notorized by a Supreme Court judge. Because, you know, Microsoft doing something better than Google completely contradicts the Slashdot Theory of Logic.
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If IP addresses are personal data, and you visit my web page, and my access logs show I served an IP that you used at a certain time (or even just that I served an IP you used), am I now subject to laws regarding the holding of personal information? If you were to contact me and request that information how would I authenticate you? If I was to disclose certain parts of the "personal data" that you claimed belonged to you, how could I know that I was not disclosing someone else's personal information, given that I can't necessarily authenticate you or anyone else and IP's can be re-allocated? If I ban an IP address for abusing my server and it is later re-allocated to someone else, is that slander? If I forward an e-mail whose headers contain IP addresses of relay servers, is that unlawful disclosure of personal information?
This is totally ridiculous.
While everybody can check a directory such directories don't exist for IP numbers. Respectively the information needs to be obtained from the ISP.
I never heard of the requirement of a court order before checking a phone directory.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
His name is Peter Schaar, not Scharr. One would think the editors would at least *skim* TFA.
Oh, and he's a great guy BTW, responding to email in a timely and thoughtful manner, and investigating the questions he's being asked.
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
Germans learned from nazism and sovietism that privacy was a damn serious issue. That any entity with personal information about several million people can turn into something nasty. They completely understand how IP logs could be used in a bad way, Americans tend to be optimistic about this but Germans already have undergone two periods of oppression that relied on an extensive invasion of privacy.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Wikipedia records IP addresses for all anonymous editors. I wonder how this will affect the project?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Wow, even for /. there's a lot of people who didn't even read the summary, let alone TFA. And there's a lot of FUD being spread.
What this means is that IP address information might be considered personal data under EU data protection laws. This means that companies/corporations/organisations which log your IP address will have to have a privacy policy in place governing how that information is used.
There are also certain requirements, such as they have to make people's own information available to them if requested, they have to disclose breaches of information to those affected and so on.
It doesn't stop logging IP addresses, it won't stop webservers using client IPs to maintain statefull connections, it won't stop google associating IP addresses with search data, it won't stop wikipedia or forums storing the IP of posters. It just means that organisations doing this need need a privacy policy in place to protect this data (which most of them already have to protect other private data they store).
It's just acknowledging that IP addresses can/may be used, in some cases (the summary points out that they already acknowledge IP addresses are often dynamic), to identify a person and deserves the same level of protection that things like phone numbers and home addresses already have.
Helpdesk: "Hello, this is the Yahoo Germany Helpdesk"
Caller: "Yes, I want you to delete all your records with my IP address in it..."
Helpdesk: "OK"
Caller: "and I want you to tell me who gave you my IP address."
Helpdesk: "Umm, well your computer will have sent us your IP address when you connected to the website"
Caller: "Oh, I don't think so, I have a very good firewall."
Helpdesk: "Hello, this the German National Bank Helpdesk"
Caller: "Yes, I want you to delete all your records with my IP address in it..."
Helpdesk: "Sure, and what is that IP address?"
Caller: "10.0.0.10"
Helpdesk: "Hello this is Ebay Germany, how can I help you."
Caller: "Could you please delete all records relating to my IP address."
Helpdesk: "Sure, do you know what the number is?"
Caller: "Didn't you make a note when you recorded it!"