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Products available to hide your IP

Discussion in 'ARRSE: Site Issues' started by Duckie, Dec 28, 2008.

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  1. Duckie

    Duckie Swinger

    Can anyone recommend a product to hide your IP?

    I've seen loads advertised, but would like to use a recommended one.

    I just want to hide my IP when surfing the net, (so my boss doesn't know I'm on here!!) and when I send emails.

    We are tracked and monitored enough in life I think, and I think which websites I go to, and what emails I send, are my business, and no one elses!!!

    I would like a free service, obviously, but have seen some for £10 or £20 that hide your IP for life.

    Any good ones or bad ones out there?????

    Thanks!
     
    Duckie, Dec 28, 2008
    #1
  2. Tremaine

    Tremaine

    Deleted by poster as info was apparently incorrect.
     
    Tremaine, Dec 28, 2008
    #2
  3. Good CO

    Good CO LE Admin

    You can hide your IP using a proxy server (google that and you'll find loads). This is man-in-the-middle that knows your IP address so receives data and forwards it on to you. Otherwise you have to have an IP address visible to the sites you use or they wouldn't be able to deliver the content back to you. Kind of like writing off to Blue Peter with a blank self-addressed envelope inside. You will never know about that competition win and your blue peter badge will be lost forever.

    If like most people you have a dynamic IP address, then you are nigh on untraceable anyway. You share that address with thousands of others who use the same ISP. For someone (eg. us) to trace you we would have to go with a court order to your ISP giving the exact time you were accessing ARRSE.

    Conclusion - stop worrying. You sound like a conspiracy theorist.
     
    Good CO, Jan 1, 2009
    #3
  4. Good CO

    Good CO LE Admin

    By the way - the information in Tremaine's post is mostly wrong. IP addresses are not affected by firewalls, nor are they uniquely associated with machine names and you can change it. Tremaine may be confusing it with a MAC address, but this is not visible to websites anyway so I won't bore you with it.

    Not responding to ping (or any other connection) requests is fine, but has nothing to do with the issue you ask about.
     
    Good CO, Jan 1, 2009
    #4
  5. blue-sophist

    blue-sophist LE Good Egg (charities)

    Weird ... my IP address is Trowbridge, Wilts - about 250 miles away.

    I don't understand computers any more :oops:

    Happy New Year, GCO ... and BCO, of course.
     
    blue-sophist, Jan 1, 2009
    #5
  6. smudge67

    smudge67

    Persec!!! FFS!!! :wink:
     
    smudge67, Jan 1, 2009
    #6
  7. Argee2007

    Argee2007 War Hero


    If i were you i'd get an IP hider to stop people thinking you lived in that sh1thole :lol:
     
    Argee2007, Jan 1, 2009
    #7
  8. blueygirl

    blueygirl War Hero

    Apologies for hijacking the thread but I wonder if anyone can explain (in very simple language I am a bit of a luddite) if it is possible to find out which machine, country, etc an email came from?

    I have a received a couple of vey nasty emails from the account of someone I know. They have stated categorically that they did not send them, but have said that their account has been hacked in the past. I am not sure I believe them but being a trusting sort of girl have taken this at face value. I did however take the precaution of telling them that if this happens again I will have no hesitation in informing the email provider and the police. Any advice (even if it is that there is nothing I can do) would be most helpful.
     
    blueygirl, Jan 1, 2009
    #8
  9. blueygirl

    blueygirl War Hero

    It's OK chaps, I think I've managed to decipher some stuff found by way of google.
     
    blueygirl, Jan 1, 2009
    #9
  10. happybonzo

    happybonzo LE
    1. ARRSE Camping, caravan, tenting and motorhome club.

    happybonzo, Jan 1, 2009
    #10
  11. Good CO

    Good CO LE Admin

    The email protocol doesn't carry any information about the PC (operating system et al) like a normal web page HTTP request. It does have IP addresses though as it's not fire-and-forget; the receiver communicates back to the sender "hello a", "hello b", "got an email for..", "that's cool, send it" etc, and to do this you need IP addresses. You'll get a chain of them as the email was forwarded through intermediaries called mail exchangers.

    However it's much easier to hide the true originating IP address as the system effectively uses the proxy system I mentioned in my first post. The second 'however' is that most people have dynamic IP addresses, given to them by their service provider (ISP) from a pool of addresses shared with all customers. The upshot is that the IP will likely only give you a rough geographic area and the ISP. You may be lucky and get a company (not just the ISP), but even then you won't know where it came from within that. The third 'however' is that you probably won't get the originating IP at all as most private PCs don't actually send mail, but just pass it to the computer (owned by your service provider, or hotmail etc) that first properly transmits the email.

    Anyway, somewhere in your email client you'll find the option to show you the full email headers. This looks something like (spam to us):

    X-Yahoofilteredbulk: 217.146.97.5
    X-Ymailisg: akHaKt4tYB3Jj4eShfrMCib9Ii0wItJqJ_87MR6Ua13w8N49hkfDrpmwWZj5KHY3.EKcEPuwwzgOYNwE7ApRvN80lM3a9UGoXQQW.Dnn09Bj5_eT2c29G_K945eKUfC53DltPtYgJoZMCdxFSXGir15_8Jy39HmKB.3CdHD151nsmrTzsDoG_K3sXkO5jDdQnOJXutQl9dVD_kJs2X3TsG8RKApVDrxgXKi17rBar94RgOTSSa1XeWMo74Qw
    X-Originating-Ip: [217.146.97.5]
    Authentication-Results: mta137.mail.ukl.yahoo.com from=arrse.co.uk; domainkeys=neutral (no sig)
    Received: from 217.146.97.5 (EHLO gawain.merula.net) (217.146.97.5) by mta137.mail.ukl.yahoo.com with SMTP; Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:28:18 +0000
    Received: from athedsl-395321.home.otenet.gr (athedsl-395321.home.otenet.gr [79.131.96.55]) by gawain.merula.net (8.14.1/8.14.1) with ESMTP id n020M2RC029817 for <yabbadabbadoo@arrse.co.uk>; Fri, 2 Jan 2009 00:22:03 GMT
    Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2009 00:22:02 GMT
    Message-ID: <200901020022.n020M2RC029817@gawain.merula.net>
    To: <yabbadabbadoo@arrse.co.uk>
    Subject: She's writhing in pleasure
    From: <yabbadabbadoo@arrse.co.uk>
    ..........

    It starts at the most recent and works back down the chain of intermediaries, so the last "received: from" is the one you want. Type the ip address in to samspade.org and you'll get some information - probably useless.

    *** health warning *** I'm not as good on the email process as on web page transfer. This post may have errors, but only minor ones I think - these will be in the exact forwarding details and terminology.
     
    Good CO, Jan 2, 2009
    #11
  12. blueygirl

    blueygirl War Hero

    Thanks GCO - much as I have already discovered...some of this 'pooter lark is not as complicated as it first appears :)

    ....in the absence of other methods of discovering where/who they came from, I will wait and see if they heed my warning...
     
    blueygirl, Jan 2, 2009
    #12
  13. Mikal

    Mikal LE

    Mikal, Jan 5, 2009
    #13
  14. Cooks_Assistant

    Cooks_Assistant Swinger

    Another suggestion, since email headers can be faked:
    Use a web beacon.
    This is a remote file (normally an image) included in a HTML email (or PM). When the email is read the persons email reader 'fetch's' this image from a location of your choosing, typically a server you own. You then check your server logs to find the IP which fetched your image. As a bonus you'll get their user-agent giving you their operating system, web browser and version.
    I recommend a 1x1 pixel white spot. Very hard to spot. Many email clients /web-portals block remote images now so it's becoming harder to do but it used to be the way to get peoples IP by email.

    It's more complex than email headers but it will give you a more accurate IP location than a public mail server which with services like Gmail is all you will get. I won't explain the ins and outs, Google will help you there.

    Edited to add, some of the avatars people use on arrse are remote images. The reason for doing this may be innocent but some are there to harvest IP's of arrse users.
     
    Cooks_Assistant, Jan 5, 2009
    #14
  16. Good CO

    Good CO LE Admin

    " The reason for doing this may be innocent but some are there to harvest IP's of arrse users."

    To the casual reader that sounds like you're accusing US of some sort of underhanded behaviour. I would appreciate a second post just clearing that one up.

    Interesting stuff though and thanks for the post.
     
    Good CO, Jan 6, 2009
    #15
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