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Comment by Tepix | Hacker News Reader

Nowadays internet users on cable often keep the same IP address for weeks if not months. Who knows, your ISP could change its configuration tomorrow and always re-assign the same IP address to you as long as its available.

I think the point of this website is to show people that using torrents is far from anonymous and invisible.

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That, and you should know that there is almost certainly history of who had which IP address when; it's not going to be the same DHCP server running on your small router.

If you download something, get a new IP, and the ISP gets a complaint for your old IP, they have that data and may be obligated legally to do something about it.

In the long long ago I worked at a small regional ISP. We offered dial-up and dsl. Users were assigned whatever IP was available when they connected, and this was logged (including disconnect time).

So, it was very easy to search the logs and see who was using an IP at a given time in the past (assuming we still had the logs).

I would pay extra for an ISP who only kept those logs say 1 hour.

1 hour should be plenty to identify who is currently running some network attack, and arguably an ISP doesn't have a legit reason for keeping private data longer than necessary to be an ISP under the GDPR .

That would require you to have a choice of ISPs...

I wonder if there are any government requirements here for people operating ISPs. Does anyone have any insight into the time range that is required to keep these logs (if there is one)?

In France it's one year.

Yes there is, at least in EU, not sure for how long do they have to keep the logs.

EU: According to a directive passed 2006, a minimum of six months and at most 24 months. But that directive was ruled invalid and anulled in 2014. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive

Earlier this year there was a case where someone was accessing illegal stuff (as in, the sort of stuff that does warrant police kicking their door down at 4am) using public WiFi.

Except the ISP had forgotten to take into account daylight savings time and given the police the wrong customer's details. Oops.

ouch

More proof dates aren't easy.

they would be if everyone would just use UTC

Let's go a step further and use TAI to avoid leap seconds while we're at it.

The orthodoxy is that the two most common forms of time stamps are:

(1) Unambiguous: a time in the past that is represented by the number of seconds since the epoch, Jan 1 1970. When coupled with a location/jurisdiction, they can be converted into a wall-clock time like “1:23pm 04 May 2006 Europe/Paris.”

(2) Ambiguous (but semantically meaningful): a time in the future that would be shown on a clock at the location of the event.

The logging of IP addresses would use the former.

The upcoming trial date for illegal torrenting would use the latter.

So who found out the DST issue in the end?

My modem has had the same IP for nearly 10 years now! It's the same even after several moves, one to a new county. Super convenient, but that's the nicest thing I have to say about Comcast. Boy I wish there were other options.

Yep, Comcast ties your modem's mac address to an IP address.

However, if your modem is off long enough for a new user in your area to need a new IP address, they'll snatch up yours.

Also, 10 years? I guess DOCSIS 3.0 has been around that long. That's pretty impressive.

I recently got a docsis 3.1 modem, you have to call and activate the MAC. They just used the same IP, conveniently enough.

It's probably because it needed an IP and the modem that was turned off, leaving an IP open was your old one. That or they changed their system. The odds historically have been low getting the same IP.

My IP hasn't changed in about a year, although it is supposed to be dynamic.

On the other hand I use extensively a torrent tracker and the site shows nothing.

Mine changes every few weeks.

I found it amusing to see that the OP web link stops showing what my IP has been downloading at the same time that I got the IP only about a week ago.

It'll usually change if you power cycle your modem.

Whe website has to "know" the torrents you downloaded.

If you are downloading obscure or non-english stuff chances are they don't have the torrent and it won't show up on the list.

Yup.

I had the same IP address for the entire 3 years I lived in an apartment. Even telling my router to release and renew the IP would still give me the same IP. Only when I moved to a new house (and still used the same ISP) did my IP change.

https://github.com/sietseringers/MACAddressTool

That's only for Windows, you would need to change the MAC address on the router WAN port for the ISP to notice.

Not sure what you are talking about, I have been using this for years to generate new IPs.

Private IPs on local networks (192.168.0.0/16, etc), or globally routed IPs assigned from your ISPs netblock?

IP assigned from ISP

I'm mildly curious how your ISP works then. Like the other commenter said, this tool will change your Windows device's MAC, not the modem's.

To be clear, there's your device's MAC, the Wi-Fi AP's MAC and the modem's WAN-facing MAC. (Integrated Wi-Fi router/modem combos obviously have both.)

If this tool is successfully getting you new public IP addresses, something VERY weird is going on with your (probably integrated) modem.

I did this many times back when I just had a plain cable modem, not router or anything. I havent tested since I switched to a Modem Router combo, I would suspect it wont work under that setup.

But yes, my original point stands. I can run the tool, change my network cards MAC, restart the Modem, and I get a new public IP address. Ive been doing this for years to bypass IP blocks.

Ahh, that explains a bit: let me guess, your modem had a single Ethernet port on it, which you were running directly to your computer?

That means the modem was cloning your device's MAC address onto its own WAN interface. Which is... weird, but would have had some kind of logical motivation.

Maybe it meant the modem vendor didn't have to maintain their own MAC registration ("just copy the device's!"), or maybe it was an ISP "what kinds of devices are our customers using?" kind of thing (the majority of results would have been routers, not single devices). Or maybe this is normal for cable modems (never used cable myself, just ADSL2+).

You don't need a tool to change your MAC address. You can do it from the Control Panel.

And as another commenter said, this would only change my local IP (192.168.254.x) IP, not the WAN IP (50.39.x.x). I would need to change my router's MAC address, since that's the only MAC address my ISP sees. And depending on my ISP's DHCP configuration, I still might not get a different IP. I might even make it unable to get an IP at all.

Exactly, I posted the title as it's the link of the site and admittedly salacious enough to click, but I don't (and I'm sure the site owners don't) want to allege that there's any internet mysticism going on.

Comcast assigns you an IP based on the MAC address of your modem and the only way to change it is to get a new modem. When I had AT&T it could change at anytime.

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