That's an interesting (and chilling) news story. I've also read that
IPv6 might make IP geolocation more difficult because it is easier to
reassign IPv6 addresses, but maybe this was with respect to region-level
geolocation (not country-level).
Do you have a url for the "findme" ip geolocation utility you tried? I
am extremely suspicious that there is a robust method for extracting IP
addresses from behind a proxy. Assuming that your proxy isn't
advertising your IP address in an HTTP header (e.g. X-Forwarded-For),
then they probably got your IP using Java. If you disable Java, then
your IP should remain hidden.
-James
Mike Liebhold wrote:
Most of the big commercial IP geolocation providers, like quova also
have robust and improving capablities to mine ip geolocations for
addresses that might be behind a proxy. I know from personal experience
from behind a proxy a thousand miles away from my registered address,
when I used the findme ip geolocation utility on a high profile web
mapping site.
The International Herald Tribune has an astounding and chilling quote
here from Madam Hu Qiheng, chair of the Internet Society of China,
regarding China's impending wide scale adoption of IPv6, and plans for
more traceable individual IP adresses:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/03/19/business/chinet20.php
" The standard, known as IPv6, solves technical problems faced by the
Internet around the world, but Internet freedom advocates outside China
warn that the internationally developed norm would also allow Beijing
authorities - or any government or company for that matter - to have a
better idea of what individuals are doing on the Internet.
"There is now anonymity for criminals on the Internet in China," said Hu
Qiheng, chair of the Internet Society of China, a public-private group
founded five years ago to promote the Internet in China. "With the China
Next Generation Internet project, we will give everyone a unique
identity on the Internet."
[snip]
"It may not be popular everywhere to say this, but I think it is
important for the government to monitor and police the Internet," Hu
said. "Bad things now happen on the Internet, and we want to stop that."
Fighting Internet crime, which Hu defined broadly to include acts
counter to the interests of the Chinese government, requires a more
certain way of identifying people online, she said.
The IPv6 standard, Hu said, offered the best mechanism for establishing
the identity of users online. "
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