Some Bloggers Displaying Visitor IP Addresses in Their Sidebars – WTF?
by Avinash
Face the truth: Running a blog, having a few hundred/thousand subscribers and getting a few thousand uniques/day doesn’t give you ANY right to ruin our privacy. Day by day, the “Show Your Visitor IP Addresses” trend seems to be going out of control. Bloggers are adding the “display visitor IP addresses” type plugins without caring about the visitor privacy.
If you use any plugin that reveals visitor IP addresses for the world to see and do any friggin thing with it, I kindly request that you remove such plugins pretty soon. If you ignore my request, I’ll create a list of all the bloggers who are using such plugins and request my readers to stop visiting such sites. I’ve also planned to start a campaign on this topic and I believe that when you start a campaign for a good cause, your friends certainly support you. Visitor Privacy is a serious topic and we bloggers will have to do something to stop ‘em who are ruining our privacy.
Once again, I request that if you care about your blog readers, please stop revealing their IP addresses.
p.s. I’ll highly appreciate it if these wonderful bloggers take some time out of their busy schedule to write on “Visitor Privacy”:
I’m sure that I haven’t added many people in the list but if you aren’t in this list, it doesn’t mean you aren’t awesome. (: There are a few hundred people who should be in this list but it’s just a start. I want to know what these bloggers have to say on “Visitor Privacy”. If you think that whatever I’ve written is wrong, feel free to ignore this post.
p.p.s. If you’ve already written any article on this topic, please let me know. (The comment form is open for this post. It’ll be automatically disabled after 30 days.)
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Avinash,
To be honest, I haven’t heard much about this topic. I’m curious what sites are using this technique, and what plugin would be assisting these bloggers in violating user’s privacy. Could you please either e-mail me or respond to this comment with some of this information?
Interesting point, and I agree; it is an element that should not be made public automatically. At this moment, I wonder what useful benefit of such publication could be, other than to let some community member or someone know where the commentors are from. Still, an exact ip address is too private.
In a world where people get sued and fined for $222,000 simply because of an IP address and the MAC address, keeping our IP addresses private whether or not we are doing anything wrong is a very good idea.
[PS: For some reason, I couldn't pass your math CAPTCHA even though I could swear I entered the answer correctly. I had to enlist the help of a friend to post this comment.]
Ronald,
Thanks for the comment. I’ll contact you soon. I’ve seen these type of widgets on more than 10 blogs in the past 1 week that display “Which IP address visited your blog from which country”.
Bes,
Sorry about the CAPTCHA trouble. I’ll disable this plugin for now. And that RIAA news is not the only example. My background is related to network security so I know how can IP addresses be misused. Showing someone’s naked IP address publicly is freaky. Even IRC networks like Freenode allow users to mask their IP addresses.
Thanks for stopping by! I’m glad that you are agree with my points.
Hi Avinash (I too failed the math)
I agree I can’t see what purpose this plugin serves other than to make the visitor (well me anyway) uncomfortable.
Thanks also for the link to my site. My post was more about the fact that bloggers personal details – name, home address and phone number may be being displayed on websites other than “whois”. Many new (and more established!) bloggers just don’t seem to be aware of this.
Cheers
Meg
Meg,
Thanks for taking the time to leave the comment!
I completely agree with you that many new bloggers seem to be aware of this problem but what do you think about the people who have been blogging for years and still develop such plugins and then promote it? In the year 2007, it has become a lot easier to know pretty much about a person just by his IP address. Why put your innocent visitors in the danger zone by revealing their IP addresses?
p.s. Pretty sorry about the math trouble. Bes faced the same trouble. I’ve disabled the plugin.
Hi Avinash,
I think visitor privacy is a huge issue, one that can make or break a business. I did some research a while ago and found that revealed visitor data can lead to phishing and expose the business legally-wise. You can read it here …
http://www.cogniview.com/convert-pdf-to-excel/post/the-information-leak-in-the-online-collaboration-sink/
This piece actually caused Zoho to change their demo to protect their users. See here…
http://www.cogniview.com/convert-pdf-to-excel/post/zoho-removes-demo-account-from-home-page/
Up until now (it’s been a few months) they were the only ones to respond. I hope your post will make a bigger splash.
Yoav
Do you mean a plugin that shows the reader their own IP address as they read the blog (in other words, you only see your own address)? Or is there a plugin other bloggers are using that shows a whole list of visitor’s IP addresses?
I use the first kind, but it’s easy enough for the reader to check this themselves if they know how (e.g. using a Firefox plugin).
Baxter,
I or any other person won’t have any problem if people use a plugin that displays IP addresses to a particular visitor. I don’t understand what is the purpose of displaying a list of Top 10 visitors with their IP addresses.
I think I’ll have to write a follow up post displaying different type of plugin uses that reveal visitor IP addresses to the world. And plugins are not the only problem. Many people code their WordPress comment templates in a way that displays IP address + country flags.
Yoav,
Thanks for the comment! I’m gonna read your article. And I believe that one blogger can’t do anything. Many intelligent bloggers will have to unite and write about this issue on their blogs so more and more people become aware of this problem.
I’ll add your article link in this post so others can learn more about visitor privacy.
Thanks once again for stopping by!
Hi Avinash… nice of you to consider including me along with some esteemed bloggers :) I’d be more than happy to explore on the topic but I haven’t really come across any blogs displaying IP addresses of visitors yet… but I’d be very uncomfortable with the practice of course! it doesn’t serve anyone other than blog author’s ego and there are many safer ways to do that if one is blogging just for that purpose I believe!
Pearl,
Thanks for stopping by! I’ll soon be posting a follow up post with some screenshots.
[...] I’m busily getting ready to go out of town on business, but I was conjured by Avinash to write on a topic that’s got him fired up. Apparently, there’s a new blog [...]
[...] and gentlemen, I came across a new phenomenon, kindly put to my attention by Avinash. I found myself face to face with a plugin for blogs which displayed the IP addresses of the last [...]
Hi Avinash. Pretty nice of you to point out this issue. Frankly, I never knew about such a feature until now.
I believe that our visitor’s identities and privacies should be respected. I just put in a post on the issue in my blog (http://www.bloggingindia.net/2007/10/09/diplaying-top-10-visitors-ip-addresses-what-has-this-world-come-to/)
Thanks a lot for rising your voice against this dastardly phenomenon. Also, I think that country flags are OK. Or even pointers on a map are ok. Or something like MyBlogLog. But displaying the raw IP address is going a bit tooooo much. Such a motion should be stopped. Can you tell us a few sites which display the links? We could talk to the webmasters.
Cheers,
Mohan
Mohan,
Thanks for writing about this! Please give me some time because I’ve been busy doing some offline works. As soon as I’m free, I’ll write a follow up post explaining everything.
I won’t leak the site URLs who are/were using such techniques to reveal IP addresses but I’ll certainly include a few screenshots. I’ve received two emails from such bloggers who used to publicly display visitor/commentator IP addresses. I’m thankful of a few bloggers who blogged about this problem. A few people have tried to be serious about their blog visitors/commentators and that’s a pretty good thing.
As far as displaying just country/city flags is concerned, I can’t think of any use of such a plugin. Why would someone use such plugins to display country/city flags of their visitors? Even if one is using a plugin to display IP addresses to only one visitor, it’s not a good practice, IMHO. I, Meg, Yoav, Baxter and other experienced bloggers may not have any problem with such plugins but do people think of new comers?
I can’t find any logic behind using such plugins that display country/city flags. Doesn’t a visitor already know what is his/her location/IP address? And there are many people who don’t wanna tell the world about their location either. How are such plugins useful then?
Well, there are many such pretty useless plugins about…
But some people would like to know from which country the other commenter is from… A small country flag can save a question.
I also opine that such country flags, MAY, in some cases lead to discrimination and racism.
Hi Avinash
I too agree with you that IP Addresses of the visitors should be kept public.
But I am interested in knowing what all can be done using someone’s IP Address.
I am very much curious about it, as I am not much from this networking domain.
Also, is there any way to hide our IPs from such sites/plugins?
I’ll very much appreciate your response.
Thanks for the nice information.
Manu,
You should visit Tor.
“IP address + country flags”
i think there is not really need of the above things to get displayed. To know from which country the visitor’s are coming is ok but as said “MAY, in some cases lead to discrimination and racism ”
I agree that IP Address of the visitors should be kept private.
Hey Avinash. Any update on this? :)
Hey Bes,
Thanks for reminding that I am yet to write a follow up post on this topic! Been busy working on a few projects so forgot too many things.
Please check back after a few days for the next post on this topic.