Can You Really Be Traced From an IP Address?

Barence writes "Identifying individuals using nothing more than their IP address has become a key part of anti-piracy and criminal investigations. But a PC Pro investigation casts serious doubt on the validity of IP-based evidence. 'In general, the accuracy of IP address tracing varies depending on the type of user behind the IP address,' Tom Colvin, chief technology officer with security vendor Conseal told PC Pro. 'Whilst big businesses can be traceable right back to their datacenters, standard family broadband connections are often hard to locate, even to county-level accuracy.'"

Comments

Sure. Don't be paranoid!

[Chas]

Depending on what data is being captured by the ISP for management purposes, this COULD be true.

But, if they can track you well enough to meter you (Comcast, AT&T, etc), they can track you down to your IP too.

reverse dns + office workers = trouble

[jaymz2k4]

I'm often having to remind users in the office that a simple reverse lookup on our IP and there's the company name sat right there, a few clicks and you've got the building address. Go onto linked in and you've probably got half the employees full names. A lot of people forget just how much information you can get from work IP's. It's not CSI style VB GUI interface level but if you're about to go make some stupid edits on wikipedia don't do it from your office connection.