Subject: Re: Privacy problems in IPv6

From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 10:47:24 -0400

In message <[email-masked]>, "Richard M. Smith" w
rites:
> Hi,
> 
> Is the attached article accurate in the technical details of
> the IPv6 addressing scheme?  That is, an IPv6 address
> contains the Ethernet adapter address of a person's
> computer and the adapter address will be sent out to each
> and every Web site they visit?

Yes and no.

Yes, that's one scheme that's been proposed, though the motivation was to 
permit easy autoconfiguration.  But privacy is a concern, so there's an 
alternate mechanism being defined; see
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ipngwg-addrconf-privacy-00.txt

		--Steve Bellovin

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From: "Richard M. Smith" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 10:57:04 -0400

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the link.

Any idea what this alternative is not mandatory?
That is, an Ethernet adapter address is never
sent inside an IPv6 address.

Richard

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Friday, October 08, 1999 10:47 AM
> To: Richard M. Smith
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: Privacy problems in IPv6
>
>

		--Steve Bellovin

---

From: Ignatios Souvatzis <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 17:13:31 +0200

> sent inside an IPv6 address.

The latter does NOT make any difference. As long as your machine has an 
address that doesn't change, and you're the only user, and you use it for
"surfing", and you don't use a proxy server, you are trackable, even with
IPv4. This is no IPv6 problem.

However, the people who want to track you have invented "cookies", and use
them, today. So as long as you don't switch off cookies, switching your 
address, using a proxy server, etc. won't help you.

	-is

-- 
 * Progress (n.): The process through which Usenet has evolved from
   smart people in front of dumb terminals to dumb people in front of
   smart terminals.  -- [email-masked] (obscurity)
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