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Comment by rurounijones | Hacker News Reader

So I had a look at Peertube and had the friendly reminder

"The sharing system used by this video implies that some technical information about your system (such as a public IP address) can be accessed publicly."

Which is then expanded on in an about page:

"PeerTube uses the BitTorrent protocol to share bandwidth between users. It implies that your public IP address is stored in the public BitTorrent tracker of the video PeerTube instance as long as you're watching the video. If you want to keep your public IP address private, please use a VPN or Tor. "

Seems like a large privacy leak that can be exploited by anyone who signs up to the tracker.

Requiring a VPN or Tor just for privacy from other users seems like an excessive requirement.

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Is there a reason I don't want to expose my public IP address? Every server I connect to knows my IP address.

Connecting to bittorrent would give you the following information:

* Key (IP) to connect to other data sources (but joins will be dirty, IP addresses change, people use multiple ip address, multiple people use the same ip address).

* ISP name

* Rough location (mine says I'm in a suburb about 20 miles away, when I'm actually in the city)

* Which files you have and are willing to share.

* Which files you are requesting.

There is no PII, and the only thing interesting would be to do location analysis or to try to cluster the files based on taste (people that watch movie A are likely to also watch movie B)

> Is there a reason I don't want to expose my public IP address?

Yes, I like my privacy.

> Every server I connect to knows my IP address.

And in this case it is every server plus every peer which is a much larger number of people having this information.

> * Key (IP) to connect to other data sources (but joins will be dirty, IP addresses change, people use multiple ip address, multiple people use the same ip address).

Not always. IP addresses can be correlated with other data sources. IP Addresses changing depends on the ISP. People using multiple IP addresses isn't always the case. Multiple people using the same IP address is not always the case.

> There is no PII

IP addresses can be PII depending on who you talk to. e.g. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/10/eu-dynamic-stati...

This is just another chink in the armour of online privacy no matter how noble the intentions.

> People using multiple IP addresses isn't always the case. Multiple people using the same IP address is not always the case.

I think sharing ip addresses, and using multiple ones, is probably the most common case in The United States.

Most households have multiple internet users and one ip addresses. Most people have a cellphone connected to the internet. A lot of people access the internet in locations like offices, school, and libraries.

That's what peer to peer means.

Peertube doesn't necessarily mean "Peer to Peer with Bittorrent". The "Peer" could just refer to the federated nature of the servers.

Even then "Peer to Peer" technical details can be lost on people.

Still, kudos to them to actually bring this to the forefront but I won't be using it.

They are only concerned with creating a platform for sharing videos with the mentioned advantages. The privacy part is a separate concern not to force people into connecting to the federated network in only one way. Someone can always create / use a client that has Tor or VPN built-in.

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