tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (Small privacy issue)

privacy comments on "Small privacy issue" (19171)

privacy — Wed, 30 May 2012 13:33:53 -0700

@Francois, thank you for the justificatione that only moderators cans decently have these pieces of informatione.

François G. Dorais comments on "Small privacy issue" (19169)

François G. Dorais — Wed, 30 May 2012 05:32:26 -0700

To be clear:

Although we do not disclose private user information to third parties, MathOverflow moderators make no claim regarding the privacy of users. (We don't own the software nor the servers, so we are in no position to protect user information.) In order to maintain your privacy, you must take appropriate precautions when using MathOverflow (e.g. using an anonymizing proxy service). This is one of the reasons why we discourage but don't disallow the use of pseudonyms and posts from unregistered users, for example.

privacy comments on "Small privacy issue" (19167)

privacy — Tue, 29 May 2012 22:24:52 -0700

@Mariano, thanks.
I am trying to figure out the levele of anonymiti provided by this website. I hope the abouve discussione does not revel mine little 'cynicism for good'.( You are a moderators, so you know which I maybe :))

Mariano comments on "Small privacy issue" (19159)

Mariano — Tue, 29 May 2012 09:14:51 -0700

@privacy,

If you are going to worry about people knowing your IP it should be about those who are doing it indecently rather than those doing it decently :)

privacy comments on "Small privacy issue" (19150)

privacy — Mon, 28 May 2012 06:19:34 -0700

@Scott, thanks for the informatione.

Scott Morrison comments on "Small privacy issue" (19148)

Scott Morrison — Sun, 27 May 2012 22:52:50 -0700

Interestingly, the SE 2.0 software prevents joro's suggestion from working, as they grab and serve a local copy of embedded images.

privacy comments on "Small privacy issue" (19078)

privacy — Fri, 18 May 2012 04:37:52 -0700

Dear Markvs and Dear Joro,

thank you for the information. I am now usings Tor; assuming it is save. I asked only decent methods MO users could uses to now mine IP, not clever manuever like Joro's.
So, mine final understanding is thats the only people knowing mine IP decently are thoses explained by Francois and not any other MO users. I support markvs's suggession that there be such answer available somewre. Maybe here. I think mine summary above is definitive. Thanks you all!

joro comments on "Small privacy issue" (19077)

joro — Thu, 17 May 2012 23:57:44 -0700

@privacy If you consider your IP private don't show it at all. Use (open) proxy, Tor or vpn. Every MO user can see the IPs of users visiting a question, the simplest way probably is to embed (transparent) image in a Q or A on a server on which the logs are available. When someone browses the Q or A he makes request to the external server including IP, user agent, HTTP referrer. By correlating comment time/referrer in certain situations one can find the username of the IP. In addition MO loads javascript from google, so google sees your IP (and can do actions on your behalf if they wish). This is how the modern web works :-)

markvs comments on "Small privacy issue" (19076)

markvs — Thu, 17 May 2012 18:25:23 -0700

I think that other people on the stackexchange who deal with programming, including some junior people, have access to the data as well. Anyway, it would be nice to know a simple and definite answer to this simple and definite question.

François G. Dorais comments on "Small privacy issue" (19075)

François G. Dorais — Thu, 17 May 2012 16:54:33 -0700

To summarize, the people who can see your ip when you use mathoverflow.net are the site moderators and the subset of the stackexchange team who has access to the mathoverflow.net server data.

markvs comments on "Small privacy issue" (19074)

markvs — Thu, 17 May 2012 15:42:50 -0700

@privacy: As I understand, there are some people in stack exchange who have this information also. I do not know who these people are.

privacy comments on "Small privacy issue" (19073)

privacy — Thu, 17 May 2012 14:23:54 -0700

Dear Noah,

Thanks you for the informatione. Do I understands you correctly in that, therefore, no other person(except moderators) has info about IP addresses? That answer to this will brings my question to an end.

Noah Snyder comments on "Small privacy issue" (19072)

Noah Snyder — Thu, 17 May 2012 10:44:45 -0700

Moderators, who are the people who can see your IP on the main site, are denoted by a diamond next to their name. There's a list of them in the FAQ.

In addition, at least some people at stack exchange probably have some access to this information.

privacy comments on "Small privacy issue" (19071)

privacy — Thu, 17 May 2012 09:54:45 -0700

Dear Scott,

Thanks for shadeing light on the exacte answer for the case on meta.MO
Can you aslo tell me who have accesses to mine IP address on MO prosper?

Scott Morrison comments on "Small privacy issue" (19070)

Scott Morrison — Thu, 17 May 2012 08:44:08 -0700

Meta is actually hosted on one of my machines, so it's me, rather than Andrew Stacey, who can see the IP addresses associated to posts on meta.

privacy comments on "Small privacy issue" (19068)

privacy — Thu, 17 May 2012 01:56:59 -0700

Dear grp, Dear Noah and Dear Francois,

Thanks you all for providing moderator information. I am happy about the absences of "geolocatione" since that makes MO safer from mine perspectives.

François G. Dorais comments on "Small privacy issue" (19067)

François G. Dorais — Wed, 16 May 2012 19:29:25 -0700

Moderators do see user ip adresses on the main site. The software does not do any kind of 'geolocation' we would have to do that manually. This is rarely done since it is not very useful information to have.

Noah Snyder comments on "Small privacy issue" (19066)

Noah Snyder — Wed, 16 May 2012 19:07:22 -0700

In addition Anton (and possibly the moderators) on the main site, presumably Andrew Stacey has access to information like IP addresses on meta.

grp comments on "Small privacy issue" (19065)

grp — Wed, 16 May 2012 17:58:33 -0700

If you do find concerns regarding the (sanitized) dump contents, please contact the moderators at moderators@mathoverflow.net . Anton Geraschenko usually produces sanitized versions of the actual
dumps to which he and only a few others outside of StackExchange have access. Also, if there were anything MathOverflow had that could be revealed privately to you but not to the general community, he or one of the other moderators would be the person to tell you.

Gerhard "Ask Me About System Design" Paseman, 2012.05.16

privacy comments on "Small privacy issue" (19064)

privacy — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:59:58 -0700

Dear Andreas and Dear Voloch,

I understand now. I taught people could see my IP addresss on MO. That is a good news and MO is safer with these more information.

The next place to check is the dumps. I will do that mineself.

voloch comments on "Small privacy issue" (19063)

voloch — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:48:33 -0700

@privacy: No, I cannot see your location and, on meta, there is no way of getting any additional information. On MO proper, I have never seen any IP address info or other info not volunteered by the user, but I have not tried very hard to look for those. Hence the "probably".

Andreas Blass comments on "Small privacy issue" (19062)

Andreas Blass — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:46:27 -0700

I have > 10k reputation. If I click on your name here in meta.mathoverflow, the information I get does not include an IP address or geographical information. (There might be a more complicated way for me to get such information, but I don't know one and I don't think there is one.) What the system shows me is the following:
Real Name
Email n/a
Account Created 2 hours ago
Last Active 27 minutes ago
Visit Count 2
Discussions Started 1
Comments Added 1

privacy comments on "Small privacy issue" (19061)

privacy — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:10:29 -0700

Dear Voloch,

I sees that you have more than 10k reputations. Can you see mine locatione? Why probably no? Is it certainly no?
And +1 on yours suggestions of proxy server.

voloch comments on "Small privacy issue" (19060)

voloch — Wed, 16 May 2012 11:30:41 -0700

Moderators, probably yes. High rep (> 10k) users, probably no. If you are worried about that, use a proxy server.

privacy comments on "Small privacy issue" (19059)

privacy — Wed, 16 May 2012 09:59:10 -0700

Can moderators or power user of MO knows mine IP and geographicals locatione?
Who can and who cannots?
power user: users beyond some reputution points