Internet privacy

[cwatson100]

When using a wireless laptop to access websites, does the website provider know exactly where you have accesssed their site from ie London or New York.

[nmr]

Hi There,

In short No, however if they suspect you have been doing malicous activities they can report your IP address to the Police / your ISP who cannot neccaserily trace exactly where you are (depending on how you connect) but they can trace who you are.

The only info the website owner has about you is your IP Address, Platform (e.g. Win XP) & browser type (e.g., they can use tools such as GeoIP to trace your IP and find out where in the world the IP address range is registered, 99% of the time this will point to your country & region, even city.. unless you have a satalite connection or indeed AOL!

Hope this helps,

nmr

[X111]

Would you mind expanding your reference to AOL, please, nmr ?

[stevie21]

I'm no expert but in the UK, whether you connect wirelessly or not you'll be using a UK ISP. This ISP will have a range of IP addresses which it can assign to you and you broadcast this IP address to any website which you visit.

This page
http://www.ip2location.com/
would suggest that the country that you're in can be traced via your IP address so I'd disagree with nmr unless he has an insight that I've missed.

[nmr]

Hi Again,

I may need to expand on this slightly.

IP Address ranges are registered to the the company that holds them. It is this companies location that is held and used as address reference, most of the time this will be in the same country as you are in.

However, the majority of AOL addresses come up as being located in America, also if the company is multinational the IP address may be registered to data-centers anywhere in the world. Satalite connections are simply assigned a Satalite connection code and you cannot trace which country they are in.

If an IP address is static then its easier to trace where/who the person is.

If your using a 3g or GPRS card then you will be transmitting your exact location, but again this is only available to the ISP.

The only people who can trace where you are located are the ISP's themselves who have your account details and no its you that is logged on.

[nmr]

in addition, try neotrace - its a handy ip positioning tool that will let you see what I mean, try it on your own IP address and see if its correct!