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
You have to have a public IP to go on a public website. It is your address so the network knows where to send the data.
It’s similar to mail, if you sent someone a letter that said “print out a copy of your menu and send it to me”. It’s absolutely impossible to send it to you without a return address. But that address doesn’t necessarily need to be point to you exactly, it could point to a business that knows where you are with you name and in this way everyone at the business shares that address (and businesses will frequently use a NAT which has the same effect,everyone shares the public IP). Also, mail can have forwarding services, where you send it to an address, but actually, you’re not there at all, instead someone know you and will slap a new address on it after they get it. Proxies and VPNs can work like that, to hide your real public address.
>Do most websites log or know the user’s IP address?
Yes. Most will log, all will know (unless you’re using some sort of masking service). It’s the return address of your communication. If they didn’t know your IP address, when you tried to load a webpage, you wouldn’t see anything, because it would be a 1-way communication of you asking for the website, and the website going “Well IDK who this is that asked for it, so I don’t know who to send the webpage info to.”
Think like when you send a letter in the mail. You put it in an envelope, on the internet, that’s called a packet, and just like the To: address and return address on the envelope, the packet contains the IP that you’re sending a request to, and your return IP.
>Is the public IP address required to visit any websit and therefore it’s “public” online?
See above, I suppose that should clear it up.
You need a public IP address to do literally anything online.
It’s like asking “is a public mailing address required to receive any letter?”. Yes, whoever is sending you a letter needs your address…that’s how they send the letter to you. Anything on the internet is the same concept.
an IP address functions much the same way as a physical address. If someone wants to send a package to you, you need to tell them your address. If you want to visit a website, that website needs to send information to your computer about what to show on the screen. Essentially when you visit a website, you send the website a message saying “Hey, I would like to see this page, please send it to this address”. Without a public IP, there would be no where to send it. Thus every website you ever visit will know your IP.
Your private IP address is internal IP. its used for communicating between computers within the same network. This is how your able to do file transfers between two computers in the same house that aren’t connected without using the internet. Those computers can talk to each using that private IP.
And to asway some fears, your IP isn’t capable of geolocating your exact physical location. your IP carries information on your internet service provider, what state/province your in, and somewhat close to city. For example when i look up mine, it shows the next town over. It can’t really get any closer than that.
If the website doesn’t know your IP address, then they can’t send back the content you’re asking for. As far as logging is concerned, yeah, they probably do that too. If there’s a firewall, that will most likely log your IP to decide if it needs to block you or not. And the server itself the website is sitting on probably logs all of the traffic it receives in some way or another, for some amount of time.
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.
An IP address functions just like the address on a mailing envelop.
You need an IP address to do anything online, otherwise the website doesn’t know where to send its data.
Almost all websites log IP addresses and a variety of other information like the Browsers being used.
Whether or not anyone actually bothers to look at any of it though is an entirely different question. The sheer amount of data is such that most of it just becomes noise.
Larger websites use devices like WAFs (Web Application Firewall) and a SEIM (Security Event and Incident Management) basically a log analyzer. Basically you dump all the logs into it and it analyzes trends and pulls anything that’s worth your attention.
Hiding your IP address online is also relatively easy these days using VPN services.
Do you actually need to hide your IP address?
Only if you have something to hide.
Anything on the internet you connect with will know your IP address. The IP address works like a postal address, it is used to identify the receiver for whom a message is intended.
Most, but not all, webservers will actively log all traffic. The owner of the server can read these logs to see who requested what and when. This is done by default to troubleshoot errors and spot abuse.
Yes.
Just like sending a message through the mail, if you want to get data back, you need a return address. This is your IP.
When you access a website you are sending an electronic message with your home address saying: “I wanna see your stuff, send it here” and it starts sending back electronic messages with the content of that website.
The website itself also has a public IP, and that is how you are able to send your original request. Website URls such as [google.com](http://google.com) are just placeholders for actual IP addresses. They are replaced behind the scenes automatically for you by a service called DNS, which basically is just a giant table of urls to IP addresses.
Logging is very common and also necessary for businesses. It is safe to assume that whatever you do on a computer, somewhere it is being logged.
But I think the question is, will you get caught and they will know it is you if you do something nefarious?
An IP address is used by computers to route information. The concept of public here needs clarification. It is visible to other people you talk to and so it is not private. It is not widely known, so it is not public. Using the internet means that your information will be relayed 5-7 (average) times to get routed to the final location. All these computers know your IP address, too.
IP addresses provide some anonymity.
IP addresses provide some clue about your general location, but generally it is not a specific identifier to you. Using a subpoena, the government could figure out who was using the IP address at the time or at least which house/internet connection. IP addresses can change as well. If you go use the wi fi at your neighbor, you are using their IP address.
IP addresses are less anonymous now, because data is crowd sourced and computers try to correlate GPS data with location. So if you are using wi-fi, people may know your general location given your IP address.
You can use an intermediary VPN to keep your IP address hidden. You talk to a middle computer. That middle computer uses its IP address to send your request on. And it sends the replies back to you. So only the middle computer knows who you are. This is actually a quite common security feature for work. If you work from home, you probably have to use the VPN. This prevents any hacker on your network from attacking you directly, because they don’t have your address.
However, for people to send you information requests over the internet (for you to be a web server, for example), then your IP address must be known so people can find you. That often times is publicly announced, such as Google or Amazon, but you may for example only share it with your friends.
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