IP Address Logging

[AtW]

Those in the know can determine your credit card and social security numbers from mere access to the website...

[MarillionFan]

Plus I freely admit Im struggling here, if its server side how does it get my ip address, i was under the impression only my ISP ip address could be seen.

[AtW]

ISP assigns IP address to your route or machine if it's connected directly, technically speaking it is their IP address, they just leased it to you. When two computers talk to each other via TCP/IP they need to know each other's addresses otherwise packets won't reach destination, so if a proper connection established then both parties will know IP addresses.

It is possible to use a proxy server which would make request on your behalf - this will often not tell server what was the original IP, though proxies these days should be giving such hints. Anonymiser services exist to completely hide your IP (until they get busted and admin fingers get broken).

[MarillionFan]

Thank you, that makes perfect sense. I was under a misapprehension that your local machine IP address was hidden if using a provider such as AOL, but obviously not. Therefore the server side script makes sense.

Cheers.

[TheMonkey]

Is that for me?

No.

[AtW]

I was under a misapprehension that your local machine IP address was hidden if using a provider such as AOL, but obviously not.

AOL is notorious for using transparent proxies, the barstewards.

[Francko]

A java applet can load almost completely undetectably and read machine information (not much but enough to identify the machine), then report the data back to the web server by filling in form fields.

I think that was only for a certain version of the JVM of explorer. If you do not use explorer or have the latest JVM I think this cannot occur (unless you specifically grant those rights to the applet).

[xoggoth]

Last year I caught out a bloke at work who sent me an email from the button on my website pretending to be a young woman who wanted to meet me for kinky sex. The machine address matched the sticker on the side of his machine. Doesn't work now unfortunately cos when I got forced to change hosting by the force of reaction due to stuff about shagging dead badgers I had to change from php to crappy perl.

It does not seem to work from home, that only gives my ISP address, something in way they had their network set up??

[TheMonkey]

I think that was only for a certain version of the JVM of explorer. If you do not use explorer or have the latest JVM I think this cannot occur (unless you specifically grant those rights to the applet).

Ahh they fixed that?

You can do it in flash anyway :P