Quote:
Originally Posted by kacir
When you go do some on-line banking does your bank rely on your IP address? Or do they use complicated, elaborate technical means like digital signatures, grid cards, hardware dongles that generate one-time unbreakable heavily encrypted hashes that prove that is is indeed you that makes that $9 payment for an e-book?
If IP address is such a perfect proof of who you are why are there so many internet related frauds, scams, stolen (and abused) credit card numbers?
As a network specialist I tell you, the IP address proves ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. You can use it as a starting point for further investigation, but not as an iron-clad proof!
Disconnecting somebody is too serious thing to base on such flimsy "evidence".
A log file from a computer can only be considered as a proof only when you adhere to a very rigorous procedures, and very special technical means to make sure that the evidence was not tampered with. Implementing even simple time stamp that is 100% reliable across all ISPs and "evidence" collecting "autorities" is complicated and expensive. Very expensive. And I doubt that MAFIAA will invest that kind of money when they have been collecting "evidence" with complete disregard to such things for courts.
I can produce hundreds of log files with YOUR IP address using plain text editor, I can produce very interesting screen shots showing YOUR IP address using a most primitive bitmap editor. And the best thing is, even if they catch me cheating, they can not do anything to me, because this is no court.
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Not to mention that the IP address captured is going to be that of your router, and with dynamic IP addresses that means it's possible your IP address may end being one that was previously allocated to a filesharer.
And then there's things like IP address and MAC address spoofing...