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Comment by FranchuFranchu | Hacker News Reader

> Nonetheless, the ad industry — which co-opted foundational internet technologies like the cookie and the IP address into means of identifying people online

How can you have an Internet without using IP addresses? Do you just use Onion routing all the time?

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VPNs (aka proxies) can also help. I think most ISPs (at least where I live) also use dynamic IPs which reduces the utility if IP for tracking somewhat.

I think cookie + browser fingerprinting is a much better way to track people in this situation, because it removes the uncertainty associated with dynamic IPs and multiple users behind a NAT.

In Sweden every single ISP I've used in the last 10+ years have had CG-NAT, I absolutely hate it because it stops me from self-hosting, but on the upside if the app/website is only using my IP-adress to track my location then I am apparently in one of the largest cities in Sweden, that is also 2+ hours away from me. However, most apps don't only use IP-addresses so it really doesn't balance out.

For you that don't live in small countries being 2 hours away in Sweden means you have to pass several other independent cities on your way there.

My home has a nominally dynamic ip (from Comcast), but I've only ever seen it change when the modem gets power cycled

Yeah I think different ISPs have different policies when it comes to that, I think Orange in France would cycle the address every couple of days regardless of power cycling, but here in Portugal it seems that my Vodafone public IP hasn't changed in months.

This is quite typical. When I was younger and needed my IP changed, I'd simply power cycle my router.

Newer ISPs use CGNAT so you'll be sharing your public IP with a few neighbours (7+you in the case of my ISP).

My last isp used to to cycle ip addresses at 1am every night. The modem would disconnect and reconnect every device on the network.

You can't. That's why IP addresses are a "foundational internet technology".

That's the question I ask every time I see the phrase "we receive your IP address". Of course you do, that's how the internet works.

IP addresses identify computers.

They only identify people when joined with other information.

Isn’t using Onion routing pretty much what Apple is proposing?

There are big differences.

Private relay is secure as long as Apple and the third party do not cooperate, but end to end flow correlation is much easier because streams are not isolated.

Onion routing is much more sophisticated than private relay: even end to end correlation is more difficult because of how virtual circuits are made.

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