Is Your Home Address Exposed Online? - Comments Page 2

To Paul S. There are two kinds of assignment of IP addresses, Static and Dynamic. Which is used depends on the settings of your router.

A static IP address never changes even if you turn off the computer, router and/or the modem.

On the other hand, if you have your router configured to use a Dynamic IP address, it will change every time you restart the computer.

I would assume that most people, especially those using online banking, use the static IP address settings. If they used the dynamic IP address setting, they would have to go through extra steps to verify who they are before they could log into the bank. Also, since most people have cell phones, it is much more beneficial to have a static IP address since both the phone and the computer would be using that address. You cannot use different IP addresses at the same time for different devices connected to the Internet, regardless of whether you use WiFi (wireless) or Ethernet (hard wired).

Great idea!
I'm becoming John Smith, too.

Same with me!

I am running Bitdefender VPN. Will this keep my IP Address unknown?

USPS offers a unique 'street address' attached to po box rental, which can be used as shipping address for most online purchases. Those deliveries end up in po box - a bit more secure than deliveries to home address.

Speaking of privacy: I recently came across some old IRS tax booklets from the 1970s. These were mailed to everyone who filed taxes the previous year. They contained new tax forms with instructions. The *mailing* labels had your and your spouse's SS#'s on them above your name and address! These labels were meant to be attached to the new tax forms.
Nowadays, if you forget your birthday just google your name, particularly if you own real estate!

I'm replying to Paul S. here:

In your reply to this item, you asked:

"My connection to the WWW is via a computer connected to a router which is connected to a separate modem. Unless I turn off or reboot the modem the ISP will always "see" something at my assigned IP address. Wouldn't that prevent DHCP from assigning a different IP address after a computer reboot?"

The short answer to your question is a simple "no", and a computer reboot usually has nothing to do with IP address assignment/reassignment. Here's why.

Your router has two 'sides' - the Local Area Network (LAN) side, and the Wide Area Network (WAN) side. Each 'side' has a different IP address. Your ISP 'leases' an IP address to your router from a pool of available IP addresses they own. This is the IP address that is seen by any website or Network you connect to on the Internet.

On the LAN side, your router has a static IP address (the Default Gateway). Using the DHCP protocols/services, your router leases an IP address to any device you connect to your home Network.

An IP address lease is valid for a specific period of time which is set in the DHCP server's configuration. When the lease expires, it is automatically renewed/re-issued by the DHCP server. The new IP address lease may be for the same IP address or a different one. On the WAN side, the ISPs DHCP server provides this service. On the LAN side, the DHCP server in your router handles it.

Your router uses a protocol called Network Address Translation (NAT) to determine how to route data to/from the correct connected device on your LAN. I will not describe that here. It is beyond the scope of your question.

Unless your router's DHCP server is uniquely configured, the usual behavior is as I described above, so rebooting your computer will have no effect on its IP address assignment, unless its lease expires while its rebooting.

I hope this helps,

Ernie

One of the greatest threats to privacy is social media. People often over-share information with total strangers which can come back to haunt them.

Excellent idea

To: E N Wilcox
I'm aware of the WAN/LAN difference my router has to deal with and the DHCP server on the LAN side. I have configured a static address for my NAS. But I did forget about the IP lease part that does/can exist on the WAN side. And I do recall that one can request a static WAN IP address from some ISPs to deal with certain special situations. Thanks for some clear explanations.