AskWoody and IP addresses

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Y’all know about IP addresses, yes? Those collections of four numbers, each from 0 to 255, that identifies stuff on the internet? The IP address for A
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jburk07, deuce120, ch100, abbodi86, SueW, Microfix, Noel Carboni, wavy, mledman, Elly, PhotM, satrow, Pepsiboy, Bluetrix, wdburt1, OscarCP, PKCano, geekdom

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While my IP address is in the clear, no matter what site I visit, I just left StartPage.  (visit the link to see what they’re all about)  StartPage is my browser home page, and whenever I leave a site to go to another, I go to my home page first, then on to the next site.

StartPage doesn’t “collect or share your personal information. Ever. There’s literally no data about you on our servers. None. We can’t profile you, and we can’t be forced to hand over your data to authorities, simply because we don’t have any data to hand over.”  They pay Google for search results, but they anonymize my IP address, so Google only knows that StartPage is making a query.

I don’t have a web-track so long as I make every hop through StartPage, and that’s become quite habitual for me by now.  I don’t get targeted ads anywhere but Amazon, where I do most of my online buying.

I also use uBlock Origin (which I’ve turned off for AskWoody) which keeps Facebook from filling the right-hand panel with ads, and blocks ads on every other site that I visit, except for those where I’ve specifically turned its protection off.  With uBlock Origin active, web pages load much quicker, because only the actual content is loading; the ads don’t have a chance.

And since the ads can’t load, there’s no tracking available to the advertisers.  When I leave that site, I’m off to StartPage, where I get anonymized then dropped as soon as I leave.  And StartPage loads very quickly, so it doesn’t really slow my browsing much at all.

It’s easy for me to avoid clicking on ads, because I don’t see any, other than on those couple of sites where I’ve disabled uBlock Origin.

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3 users thanked author for this post.

jburk07, SueW, Ascaris

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Very interesting and detailed explanation on how this works. On the basic issue of privacy protection, I have started a thread here #313691 on a law introduced a few days ago in the Senate.

If it passes, it might be a significant step towards parity with what is already the law across the pond. At this time, I have not seen the details. If someone is aware of them, could that person post that information? Thanks.

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wavy, Woody Lounger

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Out here in the sticks, IP addresses can be a little funny.  Google usually thinks that “based on your IP address” I am in a township several miles away and across the river.  Sometimes it puts me in another community about 20 miles away.

Once, when I was researching something that happened in Clifton, New Jersey sixty years ago, Google began to think I lived there.

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My location is typically reported as a major city ~50 miles away.  My ISP is one of the big ones in the area, and the area covered by the pool of IP addresses covers millions of people, which I like for privacy.  The odds of getting the same IP repeatedly are lower if there are a lot of them in the pool, and the uniqueness of the traits trackers can gather about me (browser fingerprint, for example) despite my habitual deletion of cookies is less significant in a large pool. I suppose I could spoof my useragent to say I’m using Chrome in Windows 10, which would enlarge the pool a lot more than Linux and Firefox, which would enlarge it considerably, but I’m hoping my use of ad and script blockers prevents those kinds of things from running in the first place.  The idea of carrying the flag, so to speak, for either Win 10 or Chrome would bother me.

A lot of the places I’m supposed to be living in are unknown to me (not being from the area and all), which I find somewhat amusing.

The best one of “these” that I saw was when I was with a small ISP, and my location was listed 780 miles from where I actually live, multiple states away.  The pool of IP addresses at that location was small, though, so while it thought I was waaaaay over there (points over yonder), it would still be easier for a tracker to recognize me even if it thought I lived elsewhere.

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At one point, the entire country of Kenya had one IP address, more or less. No idea if that’s improved.

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Must have been decades ago. They have millions now:

Major IP Address Blocks For Kenya

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Strange you should mention location, Google doesnt seem to have a clue when you turn off location for your browser in Win10 settings, naturally; Occasionally through omission I leave it on and it/they guess the City right away, not hard you might say, but sporadically you’ll get a “nag msg” to try and drill down your precise location according to Post Code, for those on “Zip’s” its something like A6B 3C6, not going to break it down (obtw its not the real one either ) but its as accurate as to be within a couple of Houses/Apt’s. That I normally decline cant make it too easy for Google to Harvest my Data now can I lol?
I use Maps and Weather so they get location turned on, makes sense to me don’t need the Weather for Timbuktu when I am half a world away, nor the directions from London to Glasgow.
Its a curious thing though M$ can triangulate my location to within a 100yds on a WiFi network connection, yet on an Ethernet connection it has me clear across Town and its the Same with @woody ‘s link right town not exactly the right address/neighbourhood.
Love to know what M$ does or how they tie in IP with Location, but there’s scant little out there on the “ole Interweb.” I can only conclude that may be other WiFi folks are not as fastidious with details of their location as I am.

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Wdburt1,

That’s because the IP address the internet sees is that of your ISP provided IP and thus you get the location of your ISP’s location (as they are the “registered” owner of the IP). For instance when I was with Spectrum it showed my location as Sumter, SC even though I live 35 miles from there.

I’ve recently switched to our Local Telephone Co-op, who’s headquarters is also in Sumter.

Also, most ISPs will give you a “lease” on an IP for a given time period, say 24 hours, then they’ll give you a new one.

HTH

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
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I use an ad blocker and thought of whitelisting your site but I never buy from online ads and am cautious about clicking on outside links. Furthermore, I hate intrusive ads that mimic tv commercials or bypass popup blockers.

Business’s either don’t know or don’t care about the negative effects online ads can have. I tried watching a two hour movie before I had an ad blocker. Every ten minutes there the same one minute (at least) ad from a local company. I got sick of the intrusion and the company, I searched online and found numerous negative comments about the ads. The ads weren’t bad but the marketer/google implemented them poorly and the company suffered.

One thing I like about this site is the freedom we have to use it in a way that suits us. We can comment anonymously or sign in. We can allow cookies and ads or block them. This makes the site a comfortable place to visit.
-firemind

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I found out that my ISP rarely changes my IP, even if I release and renew it. Almost like a static IP, but not guaranteed.  But it’s enough to allow sites to track my visits fairly accurately.

Incentive for a VPN?  You bet!

Another thing that I discovered if you use WiFi to connect. Windows location awareness is uncannily accurate if you allow websites to access your location.  I’m talking street address accurate!  You can test yours here! > https://browserleaks.com/geo

The HTML5 Geolocation API is designed to allow websites to make «one-shot» location requests (commonly used to locate the user on a map or show nearby points-of-interest), or repeated position updates to keep track of the user’s steps (which may be used to give directions as the user moves through a city, for example), as well as the ability to explicitly query the cached positions.

The API itself is agnostic to how the browser or device determines the current location: a phone or other mobile device might use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver, while a laptop’s location might be triangulated from nearby Wi-Fi networks or inferred from its IP address. Common sources of location information include Global Positioning System (GPS) and location inferred from network signals such as IP address, RFID, WiFi and Bluetooth MAC addresses, and GSM/CDMA cell IDs, as well as user input. No guarantee is given that the API returns the device’s actual location.

If you use an Ethernet connection instead, your location is estimated by your ISP assigned IP address, which ends up roughly somewhere in the geographic area of your IP address.

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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jburk07, BobbyB

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Some instructions on how to set default a denial condition or to disable all requests for location in Firefox & Waterfox would be a great help, I’m tired of telling external sites “Don’t Allow”.

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AKB3000003 has information on Firefox additional security settings.

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jburk07, deuce120, bradam

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Bless you & NightOwl, It worked no more useless geographical location queries!, also tweaked a couple of other settings.

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JohnW wrote:

I found out that my ISP rarely changes my IP, even if I release and renew it. Almost like a static IP, but not guaranteed.

I’m quite fortunate that when I release and renew, I’ve yet to see it give me the same one again.  Perhaps you could release and wait a moment (in the hopes that they will assign your old IP to someone else) and try again?

Another thing that I discovered if you use WiFi to connect.

Do you actually have to connect using wifi, or is it enough just to have it enabled?  Since it does its magic by observing the available SSIDs around the location, I would think it would work just as well when connected by ethernet as long as the wifi adapter is still able to scan.  I’d be curious to know if this is not the case.

Windows location awareness is uncannily accurate if you allow websites to access your location. I’m talking street address accurate! You can test yours here! > https://browserleaks.com/geo

“Your browser does not supports HTML5 Geolocation API”

That’s the answer I was looking for!

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jburk07, SueW, JohnW

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According to my router logs, it seems that my ISP renews my lease every 12 hours.  Rather sticky. Releasing it never seems to change it up, no matter how long I wait. So I just use a VPN full time these days. Problem solved!

I think that if you have an enabled WiFi adapter in your machine, Windows will always track the neighboring hotspots in range (necessary in case you decide to connect). It uses an API for that to triangulate your location, so that Windows always knows where you are. You can set your browsers not to leak it though, as I can see you have already done that.

If you don’t have an enabled WiFi adapter, Windows will just use the rough geo data associated with your IP address. That could be anywhere, depending on how your ISP has registered that block of IPs.

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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Geolocator Class – Provides access to the current geographic location.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/uwp/api/Windows.Devices.Geolocation

How to Track the Geolocation of Your Windows 10 Computer or Mobile Phone Using “Find my device” Feature?

https://www.winhelponline.com/blog/track-geolocation-windows-10-computer-mobile-phone-using-find-device-feature/

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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Thanks for the links @JohnW, as predicted and having GeoIP locked off since forever, below is my resultant display on FF60.4 ESR, on all our devices.

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

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jburk07

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? says:

not an issue? when I visit using Firefox I use the setting #5 in AKB3000003 “Additional Privacy Tweaks,” post #94462 which loops me back to 127.0.0.1 instead of Google. when my ISP plops me down where I am I re-boot the gateway and it usually comes up somewhere else sometimes a few miles away and sometimes across the state. I don’t think any of it really matters because “they,” know where I am… I do appreciate Woody an microfix and others for the Firefox extra security measures makes me feel somewhat “safer” since all of my entanglements with the badness have been online usually on Internet Explorer. Noel Carboni posted a great lock down for IE somewhere on askwoody, I just looked and can’t find it

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? says: found Noel’s most excellent IE security setup:

https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/a-description-of-my-quite-effective-security-environment-long/

my favourite sub post (because it has pictures):

https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/secure-attention-sequence/#post-95567

thank you, Noel C.

 

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Woody, you wrote that

I hate sites with pop-over, pop-under, rolling, intrusive, subtle and invisible advertising.

I don’t care for advertising that gets in the way or that slows down the browsing experience–sometimes to a crawl, even with a fast CPU and fiber-optic connection. But, what is “invisible” advertising? On the face of it (so to speak), that doesn’t sound like a promising business model. 

 

Keep Running Windows 7 Safely for Years to Come  
Make Windows 10 look and work like Windows 7

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In this case, I was referring to 3rd party cookies not associated with visible ads.

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Cybertooth

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I believe that Privacy Badger from EFF is intended to mitigate that sort of thing.

https://www.eff.org/privacybadger

When you view a webpage, that page will often be made up of content from many different sources.  (For example, a news webpage might load the actual article from the news company, ads from an ad company, and the comments section from a different company that’s been contracted out to provide that service.)  Privacy Badger keeps track of all of this.  If as you browse the web, the same source seems to be tracking your browser across different websites, then Privacy Badger springs into action, telling your browser not to load any more content from that source.  And when your browser stops loading content from a source, that source can no longer track you.  Voila!

At a more technical level, Privacy Badger keeps note of the “third party” domains that embed images, scripts and advertising in the pages you visit. Privacy Badger looks for tracking techniques like uniquely identifying cookies, local storage “supercookies,” and canvas fingerprinting. If it observes a single third-party host tracking you on three separate sites, Privacy Badger will automatically disallow content from that third-party tracker. In some cases a third-party domain provides some important aspect of a page’s functionality, such as embedded maps, images, or stylesheets. In those cases Privacy Badger will allow connections to the third party but will screen out its tracking cookies and referrers (these hosts have their sliders set to the middle, “cookie block” position).

I use that one, along with uBlock Origin and uMatrix in Firefox and Chrome. 

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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I think ‘targeted advertising’ is borderline fraud. The real problem is it is based on the idea that searches, visits, etc. automatically mean an interest in purchasing certain products. The problem is the context of the search, visit, etc. So the search might be just about curiosity or professional interest; Windows is a professional interest for me. It also does not factor in the need for durable goods on occasion. So if the advertising went more towards static ads aimed a more general audience they might find more tolerance and less need to collect useless data.

Paraphrasing John Wanamaker: “Half of all advertising is a waste but it is impossible to tell which half it is.”

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That makes me think of the oft-cited trope about how after you’ve searched Amazon for (as one actual person’s example) toilet seats, and bought one, you get inundated with ads for toilet seats afterwards– as if you have some kind of a new-found interest in collecting toilet seats rather than using them for their intended purpose, which would suggest that the need had been satisfied.

I’ve never seen this, as I’ve been blocking ads since the very early days of adblockers, and even though I whitelisted askwoody.com (one of a small handful of sites), it still had no way to connect any of my Amazon activity to the browser session in use at the time, so it showed what seemed to be random items.

I remember blocking ads back then based on the image dimensions, which tended to be reused across multiple sites.

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Ascaris, the example of the toilet seat is perfect. I have seen similar with other users.

I too and all I communicate with have ad blockers to stop malvertizing. Sites people like can be whitelisted.

But browsing the web without one or several of the following is dangerous, an: ad blocker, spybot S&D, spywareblaster, Ublock origin, ghostery or a HOSTS file.

People should clear their cookies and cache often or use and older version of ccleaner often.

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Thank you, Woody,

I’ve noticed a reduction in the number of different 3rd party web sites your site now attempts to access.

For those who wish to control their browser’s access to web sites, the browser add-ons UBlock [Origin] and possibly UMatrix by author Raymond Hill (aka gorhill) may be interesting…

Key things to know:

1. A web site can – and usually does – cause your browser to send and request data to/from other web sites. Often, unlike Woody’s, MANY other web sites – up to hundreds in some cases! It can be argued that when you are browsing the web in typical fashion, most of what your computer and network are doing is attempting to do and expose you to things having nothing to do with the content you’re seeking.

2. UBlock filters every web site name through a number of freely available blacklists before allowing any contact. Practically speaking, sites serving bad things are blocked. Depending on the lists you choose, that can be ad servers, tracking servers, malware servers, etc. This usually doesn’t break web sites, but just allows through the content you want to see.

3. UMatrix works differently – it disallows various kinds of web access by default, such as running scripts from web sites other than the one you’re attempting to get content from. Practically speaking, this tends to break web sites that rely on 3rd party sites – and many/most do. However, it’s easy to see what site accesses are attempted, what’s blocked, and you can simply click on things to allow them for that site. After a while, once you figure out how to set the configuration (using the panel I showed above), you start to get the hang of figuring out what to allow to get a site to work. Or maybe you just choose to browse somewhere else if the site wants too much.

Now, nothing is without a cost…

With these add-ons, while many sites are blocked, your browser will occasionally contact the websites from which the blacklists are served. IMO, it’s a small price to pay for a BIG reduction in risk from all sorts of bad things. Ad blocking is a natural result.

UBlock and UMatrix are the ONLY two browser add-ons I choose to use.

-Noel

6 users thanked author for this post.

wavy, SueW, JohnW, woody, wdburt1, BobbyB

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Thanks, and I’ll be relying on you when the time comes to ferret out the last 3rd party web sites, once we’ve swallowed the whale and added the million-plus Windows Secrets replies to this site. (That’s my all-consuming goal at the moment.)

I know we have spurious links to an old testing site. I’ve tried removing the googlesyndication.com links without luck (it’s a hard computer science problem!). And we’ll always have a link to Gravatar. We aren’t pristine yet, but we’re gettin’ there.

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Noel Carboni

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Happy to help. The users (myself included) are partially responsible for the gravatar contacts, as PKCano notes below, because of customizing their avatar. I have mixed feelings about that, but in the end I chose to go that route because a default/empty avatar just de-emphasizes forum posts. I suppose you could choose to disconnect from gravatar and set up some kind of local avatar customization here if you wanted to make your site more pure.

I originally posted a screen grab above that unexpectedly showed my own website, which apparently happened because I had transitioned from my home page to AskWoody and I guess UMatrix attributed my page’s last access to your site instead of mine. Interesting glitch. The second image, which I edited to be inline with the post, is accurate.

-Noel

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I use these two (they are awesome), with the addition of Privacy Badger from EFF for blocking 3rd party tracking.

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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Noel Carboni

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Arguably UBlock and UMatrix not allowing contact to tracking sites and blocking 3rd party scripts that facilitate the transfer of cookie info pretty effectively blocks tracking.

It’s a bit of a shame that we have to resort to such measures to keep our own gear from working against us. It’s almost shocking how much blocked access one sees if one visits a popular destination site such as is hosted by a media company (e.g., yahoo), and that’s WITHOUT letting all those extra scripts run, which no doubt contact other sites. I wonder at what point does visiting a single site without protection result in a contact of every site in the world…

-Noel

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They are both impressive add-ons that give real user control. I found that UBlockOrigin works pretty much out of the box, whilst UMatrix takes a “learning curve” because of it’s granularity.  The main issue I came across regularly in the early days with UMatrix was any legitimate site that used a third party payment company for transactions..,.. UMatrix hates redirections… which is exactly the point. But a bit of tweaking and learning is hugely rewarded and the dashboard makes it easy to do. Even now, after years of use, if I sometimes find it nearly impossible to work out exactly what needs to be allowed, and I know I am at a legitimate site then it is a one-click to temporarily switch off UMatrix….. do what needs to be done…. and then all the defaults revert….. Marvellous.

It is so educational to learn what UBlockOrigin and, particularly, UMatrix do and don’t like. I have come to have huge trust in that if they grumble about a connection there is no need to go there.

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The IP number assigned to me by my ISP is meant to be dynamic, but has changed only a few times over the years. Until recently, that has been convenient, in so far as it has allowed me, when collaborating with others in certain projects, to login to other machines in far away places and the sysadmins there all they had to do was white list my IP number the first time, and rarely had to do that again… Now everything is going VPN, so that “advantage” soon won’t matter anymore.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
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macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Current outside conections/cookies in use at http://www.askwoody.com as seen by Firefox with Private Badger addon.

pagead2.googlesyndication.com – This is still google ads?

44.33.96.32 – An ip that links to something?

maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com – No idea what this is.

secure.gravatar.com – Many sites have this. What does it do? This ip gets a lot of info on users as many sites use it.

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I can answer part of that for you. Gravatar is part of WordPress (the software running our website). There are MANY WordPress sites on the web.
Gravatar is connected to the customized Avatars you see here. So when a person has their own special Avatar, Gravatar is the link between the user and the Gravatar avatar.

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Elly, columbia2011, Noel Carboni, woody

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Thank you for the answer.

So it is like a signature like the ones used by many Anti virus software. By externally loading what looks like a simple picture. The provider of the signature is getting the exact spider web of where a user goes and with who a user has contact. In case of WordPress they get to know how many other WordPress sites you visit. The signature/avatar looks the same to everybody. But the link is dynamic with each individual user getting his or hers own download link to the signature/avatar. That is a very clever and very simple way of finding out about who knows who. Since as soon as someone else opens an e-mail signed by your link. By downloading that signature the provider knows exactly by who it originated. Avast Anti virus is one example of using this system of signatures. You can turn this off in the options of Avast. As to how much you then truly turn it off or just replace it with a more stealthy form of cross link I do not know.

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anonymous wrote:

44.33.96.32 – An ip that links to something?

That’s the OLD site server as I understand.  I had turned off uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger here quite some time ago so I would see the ads.  That was fine until Woody got a new server and then this site became the SLOWEST SITE ON THE INTERNET.  On a 200mbps download, it took this site 47.6 seconds to load…and that was ANY page here or hitting the back button even took that long as I don’t use a cache on any browser because I pay for broadband good speed (except for here where I was on extremely slow speed).  I was miserable.  I only figured it out a few days ago.  The old site server is attempted by this site and it eventually times out after (for me) 47 seconds and then loads this site finally (same with every page on this site).  This was happening on ALL my browsers.

When Woody announced he was getting the ads removed, I finally felt it was ok to again use uBlock Origin here and Privacy Badger.  So, I turned them on.  To my surprise this site, and all pages on it, loaded within 3-6 seconds!  So, I looked at uBlock’s blocking and saw it was blocking 44.33.96.32 and reported it in red.

With uBlock now on again and blocking 44.33.96.32, this site loads very fast and I am so relieved, but a bit irritated that this wonderful site was absolutely horrible when I was trying to do the right thing and view the ads.  I didn’t mind those ads but I hated having to wait almost one minute for any page here to load.

I noticed earlier tonight that on Basilisk that 44.33.96.32 is no longer showing up in uBlock and all domains are loading.  uBlock in Fx 52.9ESR still blocks 44.33.96.32 and colors it red and I still am not connected to all domains here.  So, it looks to me that maybe the old server will soon disappear for good on all browsers and not require the use of uBlock to get decent speed here because there will no longer be any OLD server that the browsers try and try to reach until there is a time out (47 seconds for me).

2 users thanked author for this post.

Elly, woody

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That is a very long and insightful answer thank you.

My main reason for the use of Privacy Badger is exactly that. Sites load way faster and use a lot less bandwidth. The fact that ads can pose a serious security risk these days is also a big factor.

In the old days banners were loaded from the same site as the one you visited. It was just a jpg or gif file. But these days ad providers want to know that you clicked or seen the ad so it is all off site. This also gives them insight in where else you might surf. This off site system means that the owner of the website can not see what is exactly loaded or what else the ad does script wise.

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? says: i think maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com is this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BootstrapCDN
public content delivery network
and here (wordpress troubleshoot question):
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/maxcdn-bootstrapcdn-com/

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Commercial ISPs are the source for most residential IP addresses. They “own” the “pool” of addresses that their customers use to connect to the Internet.
Because they actually don’t have enough addresses to assign every customer their own permanently, they use dynamic addressing (DHCP) to handle the assignment. When you connect to the Internet, you actually “lease” the IP address for a given period of time. If you disconnect, or your lease expires, your IP address goes back in the pool to be leased by whoever picks it up.

I’m going to use some hypothetical numbers in this example. Suppose your ISP “leases” you an IP address for 24 hours when you log in. You use your computer for 5 hours then shut it down (turn it off). The IP address is no longer active. So, if you do not turn your computer back on, at the end of the 24 hours, your lease expires and becomes available in the pool for anyone who needs an IP address.

But many of us have Routers. If you do, and your computer is connected to the Router (either wired of wirelessly), it makes no difference if you turn your computer off, because your Router is still active and making the connection to the Internet through the ISP. When the 24-hour lease is up, there is still a connection, so you get another 24-hour lease on the same connection (IP address). This is why your IP may not change for a long period of time. However, if you went on a two-week vacation, and shut down the hardware that was making your primary connection (Router, perhaps), you might come back to find that you have a different IP address and the one you had for so long went back in the pool to be redistributed.

7 users thanked author for this post.

Elly, Microfix, BobbyB, Noel Carboni, JohnW, woody, wdburt1

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Re router–Depends on the setup.  When I shut down the internet computer, everything on that side, including the router and cable modem, is disconnected from power by pulling a single plug out of a surge protector sitting where I can easily reach it.  When I first got cable, there was some question about whether unplugging everything nightly would somehow confuse Time Warner, but it has never been a problem.  In addition to having the router and modem silenced when the computer is off, I adopted this practice to isolate the computers from lighting strikes.  An electrical surge can still ride the cable connections as far as the wireless router, but that’s it.

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If you have a TV Guide connected with your ISP or Cable Provider, you can’t unplug the modem. The guide needs to update. Also, if there’s a firmware update, it will come down at some time when the guide is being updated. Mine is Comcast which updates each morning at 4 AM local time by default. However, my IP Address does change every twelve to 24 hours.  But it only changes within a defined pool of IP addresses, so I can always be located within a few miles.

I have a UPS power supply for backup and surge suppression. Never lost a PC or a DVR in all the time I’ve had Cable.

-- rc primak

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I also have a “digital” telephone land line (remember those?) running through my network router. Shut down the net, & it kills the phone. So not going to do that.

A UPS is highly recommended. Never lost a computer to a lightning strike or power surge while using one.

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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Since I leave my broadband cable modem and router powered on 24/7/365, I rarely see my external IP address that is assigned by my ISP change.

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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And sometimes the addresses just rotate without turning off the equipment, because the ISP wants to sell a “fixed IP address” as an extra-cost option.

-Noel

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rc primak

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As a residential user, I prefer to stay far, far, away from a fixed IP address, so I wish my ISP would switch them up every 24 hours or so.

But they don’t, so I pay extra for a full time pro VPN which gives me a new IP every time I go online.

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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That’s great if all your access is outgoing and you don’t depend on your IP address needing to be recognized by another system whose firewall is configured to let you in.

At some point you have to trust someone, because your data goes online to the wild internet somewhere… The pay-for VPN site is certainly aware of your traffic, and they certainly know who you are (billing and all that).

I prefer to keep a router at home that allows me to VPN in (no ongoing cost other than the Internet service once the router is in place) from a remote site, e.g., with my phone or laptop. Voila, communications are encrypted, extra delays are minimal, and the ISP you have chosen for service has to be trusted not to analyze your data too much.

The trouble with being connected is… Being connected. Risk can’t be eliminated, just minimized.

-Noel

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Well, you can get a fixed name even if your IP is dynamic. If your router is smart enough, that is.
(Have to go buy a new one myself, the spare I had lying around isn’t as smart.)

There are inexpensive or even free dynamic dns providers that’ll let you register a name, that your router can then go and update regularly with the credentials provided. Trustworthiness varies and so does router support (some only support using specific dynamic dns providers), so won’t name any single one here.

I did this with my old ADSL/VDSL home router to be able to get to my home network from the outside, it was smart for its day but age finally caught up with it. I’m now temporarily using the thing the ISP sent me back when I upgraded to VDSL.

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So, based upon some of the posts above, and my own current personal experience, I take it that the devs are still, as of this writing, trying to ferret out the reason the current server still keeps trying to reach back to 45.33.96.32, the IP address of the old server? I experienced that behavior immediately prior to composing this post while the main page of AskWoody was loading and while this thread was trying to load.

There’s a typo in anonymous’ post above, post number 314139. The typo is that the first octet is shown in the post as 44, when, in fact, it should be 45 as shown above in this post. That typo then promulgates through the subsequent posts referencing that initial post containing the typo.

I hope this helps, especially given the current ongoing, carefully orchestrated, attempt at “swallowing a whale”! 

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Oops yeah it is indeed 45 and not 44 my mistake. At least that is what I see now. Maybe Woody knows if there is/was more then one ip. 45 and 44 where the other one is a backup? I do not have access to logs to check what it could have been this morning. Since I write this from another location. So for now lets just call it my fault sorry.

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There are more tools to bring to bear. For example, most browsers offer a network trace capability that you can enable when browsing to a particular site.

With that, we can see the sequence of requests that lead up to the request of address 45.33.96.32, and we can see that the file from that server is piwik.js from the subdirectory /piwik/.

I don’t recognize that specific file, but a web search turns up a fair bit of info that implies it’s a Javascript tracking client by Matomo analytics. Well worth ferreting out of the site’s pages – the devs could start by searching for “piwik” or “Matomo” in the code.

Notably that particular server is not actually reachable online (at least not at this moment). It does not respond to ICMP (PING), or TCP ports 80 or 443 (http: or https:). Even being offline it could conceivably delay the loading of the web page.

-Noel

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satrow

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For weeks, I have not been able to access your site. Is my ip on the bad list and this is the reason can not get you your site? I tried to refresh to get a new IP but it did not refresh. I had to call my IP to refresh it. After that, I was able to get your site.

If that happens gain, how can I get your site? Or will I have to call again to refresh IP again.

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@anonymous-

It would help if you give yourself an identity of some kind, as there are many anonymous posters… especially if you are asking for help with an on-going problem. You don’t have to register, but using a name, symbol or number to set you apart avoids confusion.

I’m thinking that you are the same anonymous that has repeated this observation over and over again, without providing any information as to operating system, browser, or what access to AskWoody means to you (doesn’t load at all, or your posts don’t show up?), even when asked for additional information by people trying to address your concerns, but I could be wrong…

The fact that this post showed up, demonstrates that your current IP is not dooming you from accessing and participating at AskWoody, but I would expect that repeating the observation, even in a variety of contexts, without the information needed to problem solve, would result in similar anonymous posts not showing up in the future.

It would be highly unusual, if not improbable, that your IP address would determine whether you can ‘access’ being able to load and read the threads here at AskWoody…

Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter

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I’m thinking that you are the same anonymous that has repeated this observation over and over again, without providing any information as to operating system, browser, or what access to AskWoody means to you (doesn’t load at all, or your posts don’t show up?), even when asked for additional information by people trying to address your concerns, but I could be wrong…

This is “anon24”. Me too. I have been having problems access this site. Windows 7. Firefox 60.4.0 ESR. It seems that there are times that Comcast does not load the askwoody.com at all but all other sites load fine. It just spins as if loading page and than stops. Switching to IP address seems to fix it most time. I tried Chrome, Edge on Windows 10 in VM, Waterfox, and Torbrowser. None of them loads the page. Even tried to go Starbucks or hotspots from Comcast and to use Iphone and still site does not work. This started over a month ago for me. I figure this site was down or being retired at first but I have seen others post the same issue so several others are having same problem as well. It all seems to have started around the time when noted that site will be changing. “anon24”

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Elly

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Elly wrote:

It would be highly unusual, if not improbable, that your IP address would determine whether you can ‘access’ being able to load and read the threads here at AskWoody…

… Exactly.

However, every now and then you do get an improbable one.

Like that one time on a high-end server, we had *one* application failing to pass traffic to another server, started small but eventually grew to be most of that application’s packets. No firewall rules or anything like that, other applications could pass packets just fine, including all normal kinds of ping…

Eventually the problem was found. It was a cold-solder in one pin of the checksum-offload engine chip on that particular network card, and it took a specific bit pattern to trigger the fault. So yes, ip was significant.

The hardware vendor probably spent about the server’s list price on troubleshooting that thing too, since I got told that the cold-solder was actually confirmed by microscope. Oh well, covered under warranty and service contract…

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Elly

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@Elly

If you need a name, call me anonymous-VUser. I am the original poster that has been having problems for weeks. I have Verizon IP. I use Windows Xp (Main system), Windows 8.1 and Ubuntu. I use Firefox on all of them. If Verizon gives me an IP that start with 100.xx or 98.XX or 141.XX than I can not open askwoody.com. I keeps loading and than stops. I went to router to release and renew and IP but many times does not work. I keep getting the same IP even when powering off the router for 20 min or more. I once kept if off for 10 hours overnight and still same IP address in the morning. I have to call Verizon to reset it. Is there something else that can be done to access your site when I have IP address that does not load your site? All other sites that I visit regular work fine.

Signed: anonymous-VUser

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anonymous-VUser
Your post came through on one for those series IP addresses you mentioned. So you were successful with the IP you received from Verizon this time.

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Yes, sometimes it works from those IP address but only very rare cases.

Signed: anonymous-VUser

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You could test with one of the free VPN services. Then any websites you visit, such as this one, would only see the IP address assigned to your session by the VPN server.

Windscribe for your computer (Windows/Mac/Linux) gives 10GB of free bandwidth per month, with just a confirmed email address.  https://windscribe.com/features/use-for-free

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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anonymous wrote:

Oops yeah it is indeed 45 and not 44 my mistake. At least that is what I see now.

For the past few days, at least, it has been “45”.  It’s easy to make a mistake like you did….don’t worry about it.

The attempt by the site to reach 45.33.96.32 has been intermittent recently.  Two hours ago, uBlock Origin showed it being blocked here on Basilisk browser my Windows 8.0 Pro computer.  Currently, on my Windows 10 Pro computer, it has disappeared and not shown at all in uBlock.

What though are the 4 connections to dropbox that I see now? I don’t think I have seen those before.

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columbia2011

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@Mele20, the dropbox connections are attributed to post signatures (graphic link to dropbox) and the number of connections will vary dependant on the amount of dropbox signatures on the page visited.
e.g. @Elly has a dropbox signature on this page at this time.

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

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Mele20

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While not strictly speaking a requirement, or not yet, the site might consider getting a native IPv6 address to keep up with the times.

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