nanog mailing list archives
Re: EU Official: IP Is Personal
From: Joel Jaeggli <joelja () bogus com>
Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 15:10:13 -0800
Owen DeLong wrote:
I'm sorry, but, I have a great deal of difficulty seeing how an IP can be considered personally identifying.
In the case the german regulator is dealing with the ip address is not be considered exclusive of the rest of a data set. The question is given a commercially valuable dataset which contains ip addresses what is sufficient to anonymize the users while maintaining the value of the data. The regulator has one view, which is probably wrong and search engine company (google is the one that is quoted) has another which is also probably wrong. Can someone able to mine search engine log data pick out individual users? Yes it's been demonstrated several times. Can you pick individuals out of "anonymized" datasets? Yes to that too. Can an IP address in exclusion to anything else be used to pick out an individual? possibly under some circumstances, but definitely not with a high degree of certainty.
For example, in my home, I have static addresses. However, the number of different people using those addresses would, to me, imply that you cannot personally identify anyone based solely on the IP address they are using within my network. Certainly, you cannot say that I initiated all of the packets which came from my addresses. Another example would be a retail store that I work with as a SCUBA Instructor. They also have static IP addresses, but, I would not say that any of the traffic coming from the store is necessarily personally identifiable. Our entire staff (half a dozen instructors, a dozen or so divemasters and AIs, the owner, and at least one other retail assistant) source traffic from within that network. The larger the business, the less identifiable the addresses become, generally. However, even in these ultra-small examples, I don't feel that the addresses are, in themselves, personally identifying. Owen
Current thread:
- Re: EU Official: IP Is Personal, (continued)
- Re: EU Official: IP Is Personal Roland Perry (Jan 24)
- Re: EU Official: IP Is Personal Eric Brunner-Williams (Jan 23)
- Re: EU Official: IP Is Personal Eric Gauthier (Jan 24)
- Re: EU Official: IP Is Personal Jeff McAdams (Jan 24)
- RE: EU Official: IP Is Personal Rod Beck (Jan 24)
- Re: EU Official: IP Is Personal Scott McGrath (Jan 24)
- Re: EU Official: IP Is Personal Scott Francis (Jan 24)
- Re: EU Official: IP Is Personal Robin Stevens (Jan 24)
- Re: EU Official: IP Is Personal J. Oquendo (Jan 24)
- Re: EU Official: IP Is Personal Owen DeLong (Jan 24)
- Re: EU Official: IP Is Personal Joel Jaeggli (Jan 24)
- The EU's and Google's official positions (was: EU Official: IP Is Personal) michael.dillon (Jan 25)
- Re: EU Official: IP Is Personal Valdis . Kletnieks (Jan 24)
- Re: EU Official: IP Is Personal Roland Perry (Jan 24)
- Re: EU Official: IP Is Personal Joe Greco (Jan 23)
- Re: EU Official: IP Is Personal Valdis . Kletnieks (Jan 24)
- Re: EU Official: IP Is Personal Owen DeLong (Jan 24)
- Re: EU Official: IP Is Personal Valdis . Kletnieks (Jan 24)
- Re: EU Official: IP Is Personal Hank Nussbacher (Jan 25)