Not signed in (Sign In)

Vanilla 1.1.9 is a product of Lussumo. More Information: Documentation, Community Support.

General: Small privacy issue

Bottom of Page

1 to 25 of 25

  1.  
    • CommentAuthorprivacy
    • CommentTimeMay 16th 2012
     
    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
    • CommentAuthorvoloch
    • CommentTimeMay 16th 2012
     
    Moderators, probably yes. High rep (> 10k) users, probably no. If you are worried about that, use a proxy server.
    • CommentAuthorprivacy
    • CommentTimeMay 16th 2012 edited
     
    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.
  4.  
    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
    • CommentAuthorvoloch
    • CommentTimeMay 16th 2012
     
    @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".
    • CommentAuthorprivacy
    • CommentTimeMay 16th 2012 edited
     
    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.
    • CommentAuthorgrp
    • CommentTimeMay 16th 2012
     
    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
  8.  

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

  9.  

    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.

    • CommentAuthorprivacy
    • CommentTimeMay 17th 2012
     
    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.
  11.  

    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.

    • CommentAuthorprivacy
    • CommentTimeMay 17th 2012 edited
     
    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?
  13.  

    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.

    • CommentAuthorprivacy
    • CommentTimeMay 17th 2012
     
    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.
    • CommentAuthormarkvs
    • CommentTimeMay 17th 2012
     
    @privacy: As I understand, there are some people in stack exchange who have this information also. I do not know who these people are.
  16.  

    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.

    • CommentAuthormarkvs
    • CommentTimeMay 17th 2012
     
    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.
    • CommentAuthorjoro
    • CommentTimeMay 17th 2012
     

    @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 :-)

    • CommentAuthorprivacy
    • CommentTimeMay 18th 2012
     
    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!
  20.  

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

    • CommentAuthorprivacy
    • CommentTimeMay 28th 2012
     
    @Scott, thanks for the informatione.
    • CommentAuthorMariano
    • CommentTimeMay 29th 2012
     

    @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 :)

    • CommentAuthorprivacy
    • CommentTimeMay 29th 2012
     
    @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 :))
  24.  

    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.

    • CommentAuthorprivacy
    • CommentTimeMay 30th 2012
     
    @Francois, thank you for the justificatione that only moderators cans decently have these pieces of informatione.

1 to 25 of 25

  1.  
Back to Discussions Top of Page