Do most websites log or know the user’s IP address? Is the public IP address required to visit any website and therefore it’s “public” online?
In: Technology
There are going to be varying levels of logging depending on the nature of the website, what they’re required to maintain, what the website maintainers see value in maintaining, and what they functionally require to maintain.
Different websites will have different rules about how long they’ll maintain some information. Some will just have a rolling log file and maintain a certain amount of data, regardless of how long that takes. Others will roll logs based on time periods.
Some websites will log *every* web request, including the IP and the request that is made. Some will log only requests to key resources, requests that take form actions, requests that results in errors, or some combination of other troubleshooting-worthy requests.
And yes, your public IP address is required for essentially everything online. Imagine you’re writing old fashioned letter mail to Reddit asking for something to read. They’re going to look at the sender address and use that to send their reply back to you.
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