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Comment Re:CGNAT (Score 1) 25

Using "ip address, user agent and screen resolution" is extremely unreliable - think any kind of organised environment like a corporate network, cybercafe, educational campus etc. They will usually have standardized hardware and software so all of the above will match.

There's a difference between a spam lawsuit and a criminal investigation, for a serious enough crime that absolutely will happen. There will also be prosecutions brought against the ISP for failing to identify the subscriber as various laws require them to do. If an ISP isn't complying with this requirement today they are gambling and could face severe penalties.

Comment Re:CGNAT (Score 1) 25

The primary reason botnets target random home devices is because of shared ip addresses.
Earlier botnets targeted servers (more bandwidth etc), but these are trivially blocked. Once you have shared addressing you can't blanket block it without upsetting users, so you end up with login requirements or operators being forced to accept some level of malicious traffic.

If you have static addressing, and your address space earns a reputation for non malicious activity then you have a much easier life. This still doesn't help them track individual users beyond "non malicious users and not bots come from this range" as they still have no idea how many devices, how many individuals, how many roaming users etc exist. A static address block could represent an individual household, it could represent a company or an educational establishment, or a public venue like a bar or cafe etc.

Comment Re:CGNAT (Score 1) 25

The idea that companies track you based on IP is a fallacy, they use cookies and similar technologies. Even if everyone had static addressing at home and companies like google could guarantee this was the case globally, people still travel so the same device can pop up from multiple different locations with wildly different source addresses. I have multiple devices at home, but on the same VLAN they originate from the same IPv6 /64. Sites like google consider them different users, and even guess completely different physical locations for them which are hundreds of km apart.

Having a shared IP is a hassle, and a frequently rotating one isn't far behind.

Just because you have a unique IP, doesn't mean external companies know who it belongs to unless the ISP informs them.

Allowing them to track you will actually alleviate the anti-bot problems, as they can identify you as a known user. The anti-bot measures kick in when you are a *new* user as far as the system is concerned.
If you are a new user from a new ip then you get some leeway, if you are a new user from a previously seem ip then you look more malicious as bots will never retain cookies as if the bots could be tracked they would be trivially banned, and will always show as multiple users from the same address.

ISPs probably also like it because it means that without extensive logging, for which there is no business justification, they can't identify who downloaded some movie that the MAFIAA et. al. want to sue over.

Depending on your location you will probably find that this extensive logging is mandated by law. And since the logging is being done anyway, the ISP will look for ways to recoup the costs which often involve selling the data.
You think organisations like the MPAA will accept a response of "well it could be any one of 50 different users" and just give up? Absolutely not, they will either go after all 50 users with threats, or go after the ISP etc.

Europol gave a presentation on this:
https://ripe74.ripe.net/presen...

The Europol investigation also highlights a "could be any of 50 users" problem which resulted in 49 innocent people being intrusively investigated for a serious crime committed by someone else. If you're concerned about privacy you absolutely don't want a shared IP because then you're either facing detailed logging or possible intrusive investigation through no fault of your own.

Comment Re:CGNAT (Score 2) 25

ISPs using CGNAT still log traffic in order to track users, they do significantly more detailed logging for exactly that reason.
Similarly CGNAT breaks p2p, so applications like bittorrent effectively turn into a client-server model making it much easier for such orgs to go after the servers.

Comment Re:CGNAT (Score 2) 25

Far better methods such as what?

Several ISPs use IPv6 prefixes which are frequently rotated and recycled which can cause issues. A prefix which is static, or at least stable until the user explicitly releases it works much better.

The idea of dynamic addressing made sense in the dialup days when most of your users were disconnected most of the time. It doesn't make sense now.

Marketing companies like to perpetuate this myth that they track you by ip, but they don't and never have. It's just to distract users and make them waste efforts on ineffective means of avoiding tracking.

Comment Re:CGNAT (Score 1) 25

Mapping legacy addresses to v6 addresses wouldn't achieve anything, since you'd still have multiple users with the same address.

Marketing companies don't track users by IP, that's done with cookies, browser fingerprints, sessions etc. Marketing companies don't care about CGNAT.
This tracking doesn't work with malware, because malware doesn't keep cookies and each instance appears as a new user. It is the constant influx of new users from shared addresses which trigger responses like blocking or captchas. If you're not seeing this, then it means that you've got active tracking so they know you're a legit user and not a bot.

With v6 its a bit different, multiple sessions from the same address would still trigger a response but you won't be sharing an address with others so you can block tracking cookies and you appear as a new user every time, but because you're coming from a new not previously seen address you are not hit with abuse countermeasures.

Comment CGNAT (Score 2) 25

Much of the world is forced to use CGNAT to access legacy IPv4 sites, and many users are stuck with either no IPv6 or very lousy implementations (eg rapidly changing prefixes etc)...
You have one infected machine and it gets the shared gateway blocked, and then other users of the same provider are unable to access anything.

A lot of people are affected by this, but often don't know the reason. Site operators in developed countries often don't care or don't understand how users elsewhere have to suffer with CGNAT.

Example: https://www.reddit.com/r/Conve...

Comment Re:Really? (Score 2) 183

(One also needs to realize the scale and size of the US - the complete European continent is about 10% larger by area than the US - and I'm sure your systems don't work seamlessly from the UK through Russia and Turkieye and the Stans. And in some ways, a smaller country is easier to standardize - because Canada has some standard ways of sending money because that's all we had and by the time the US got interested it was too late to beat e-transfers.

The US has a single centralised government with a single currency, Europe is not. The closest thing it has is the EU which covers a significant portion of the continent and then the eurozone inside that which covers most of the EU.
Despite that the EU does have centralised payment systems that let you send money instantly and without fees throughout the euro zone.

The *stans are mostly in asia, with only a very small part of kazakhstan considered to be in europe.

Comment Re:no disk means no resale (Score 1) 94

Why should you be allowed to resell a game when you have already enjoyed the experience of playing the game? That is like selling your movie ticket after already watching the movie.

No it's more like a ticket that allows you to return to the cinema as many times as you want to watch the same movie again. Once you get bored of watching the same movie multiple times, you sell the ticket to someone else.

Your analogy of seeing a movie with a one off ticket is closer to an arcade where you pay per play.

Comment Re: If you buy it, you're paying to get screwed (Score 1) 94

It's more like seeing your neighbor wearing jewelry, and then crafting your own piece that looks the same. Your neighbor still has their original jewelry.

People do this kind of thing all the time, they see their neighbors get something and then copy them - wether its a paint job or landscaping, or a new car etc.

Comment Re:Sojust like every other tech growth story (Score 3, Interesting) 231

Amazon took nine years to reach profitability.

I'm not sure Amazon is a good example here. The company famously opted to reinvest its free cash flow into growing the business, rather than saving them and booking them as net income. They likely could have been profitable sooner otherwise.

Also, I am not aware of Amazon receiving billions in government support in the 1994-2001 timeframe.

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