IP logging

[markf]

Based on the response we received to our release notes to lj_releases, we have removed the recent change which displayed the country & city information of commenters when IP logging is enabled. We want to note, however, that comment IP logging has been a feature on LiveJournal for a very long time, and that the city & country information has always been

Comments

[mimi_sardinia]

I think IP logging itself should remain, but displaying city and state of users should not. I realise that it is very easy to obtain that information, but for the general comfort level of the user base, leave it off the comment headers.

[dontdoovertime]

In order for moderators to-- you know-- moderate their own communities, I voted that yes, they should continue to have the ability to log the IP addresses of commenters. The problem-- as far as I could tell (I'm not wise or ingenius enough to speak for the collective)-- with the "feature" you guys implemented and quickly rolled back was it showed information that was unnecessarily private. Everyone knew that your general location could be found by tracing your IP address, but it's a very different concept. And there were certainly a fair number of people who said they frankly didn't want to know the names of these towns-- they didn't want to know who was near to them! They preferred having the IP numbers for 'in case' situations, but the rest just wasn't doing it for them.

You can't take this feature away without vastly changing the amount of control moderators have over their communities and in a way that doesn't really benefit anyone. Nobody was complaining (adamantly, afaik) about IP addresses before you were blatantly showing

[bronzed]

You said this so much better than I would have, so I will say I agree with you 100%. But I also wonder what the logic is moving from showing highly specific location info and removing IP logging altogether. Why does it have to be all or nothing, why cant it just go back to how it was pre-r80? It wasnt broken thus didnt need fixing, this seems like a slightly over-reactive backpedal. But, at least they asked this time!

[dontdoovertime]

True that. I'd rather be asked something for caution's sake than not at all.

[theweaselking]

The problem [...] with the "feature" you guys implemented and quickly rolled back was it showed information that was unnecessarily private.

Uh, yeah, no. You've been broadcasting your location with every comment for a decade. The fact that you didn't understand this doesn't change it.

There has been *zero* change to your privacy and *zero* change to the information you've been sending to the people whose journals you've commented on. The only difference is that now Livejournal's eliminated the two-second process required to translate that information from IP to English.

[sarraceniaceae]

Personally, my problem with IP logging isn't that it's there. I want it there, it's useful to have around for when there's problems, and I've always been very well aware that someone can use it to find out my approximate location if they want to go to the bother.

But there's a very big difference between putting information available if you want to google a whois and c/p the IP address, and having it there so that it's hard to avoid looking at it. One, I can assume that the only way for it to cause problems is if people are actively causing them, two can cause problems by accident. If there's someone I suspect might misuse my IP address, I just won't comment to their posts or a community that they moderate.

If LJ wanted to do a feature to have all IP addresses generate a gravatar or something, so that people are individually identifiable by their computer but that lacks a way for people to track them down by location, I think that would be the best solution overall. But I don't mind the previous way of handling it.

[florentinescot]

How awesome.

Now, how about a poll about how many users want to be able to block cross-posts AT THE JOURNAL LEVEL -- and then implement that one!

[algeh]

I have had comment IP logging enabled on my journal since I created it over 10 years ago, and I believe it's enabled in every community I maintain

[dalmasca]

Hahahaha, word to that graphic. I hope if anything this helps people to be less ignorant about IP addresses and what kind of information your computer provides when you connect to the internet.

[_ofuda_]

The problem isn't that the IP address is logged, it's that information as specific as someone's immediate suburb has been provided to individual journal owners, community owners and community moderators that enable IP logging, as well as to anyone that makes an entry and receives replies to those communities.

This isn't such a big deal for someone like me, whose IP lookup info will bring up the business location in a major metropolitan area that I use the internet from, but it is a big deal for someone that lives in a smaller city, minors, or someone who has moved to evade a stalker/ex/etc., who don't have the buffer of "business location" to protect their privacy.

[algeh]

Of course, that information was already available to anyone who plugged the IP address in question into an appropriate search tool.

I'm totally in agreement that LJ shouldn't be looking up that information on every IP address as some kind of "helpful" feature, but a person with a genuine concern about privacy should be aware that their IP address does provide that level of detail to everyone who runs a website and take whatever steps they feel are necessary to obscure their IP address as a result. This is in exactly the same vein as I'd suggest that such a deeply privacy concerned person (in a US-centric context) should get a pre-paid cell phone by paying cash and not provide any personal information to their phone company at any point. It's what you need to do if you want to avoid having people trace you from your phone number to your name and where you live. If you want your location obscured on the internet, you need to use an IP proxy service of some kind.