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#Post#: 91193--------------------------------------------------
Re: Councils' acquisition of one's IP address when visiting
their websites.
DIR By: Grant Urismo
Date: September 23, 2025, 4:02 pm
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Again with my Computing lecturer hat on, paranoia and a desire
to learn through asking questions are highly desirable traits in
a cybersecurity student, so I felt the need to balance out the
likes on Hippocrates original question.
This stuff isn't obvious or simple, so I am happy to deliver as
much of a lecture on TCP/IP as the regulars would like in order
to help them argue points in front of adjudicators from a
position of knowledge.
#Post#: 91209--------------------------------------------------
Re: Councils' acquisition of one's IP address when visiting
their websites.
DIR By: dannyno
Date: September 24, 2025, 3:08 am
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Although the points made about IP address "collection" being
both technically unavoidable and incapable of identifying an
individual are valid, isn't it nevertheless blindingly obvious
that there are circumstances where information about IP
addresses which have accessed a website could still provide an
organisation with evidence about whether or not a particular
individual has accessed it?
After all, if nobody at all has accessed the website, that would
logically prove that no specific individual has accessed it.
Alternatively, if the only people to access the website are
people from within the organisation's own IP range, that would
show that no individual outside the organisation has accessed
it.
#Post#: 91210--------------------------------------------------
Re: Councils' acquisition of one's IP address when visiting
their websites.
DIR By: dannyno
Date: September 24, 2025, 3:19 am
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--- Quote from: Grant Urismo link ---
>
> With my Computing lecturer hat on, I see no cause for concern.
An IP address does not identify an individual (both factually
and legally, according to case law from file sharing cases).
Unless you've specifically paid for a fixed one and never use a
mobile device or a different wifi network, they can change
arbitrarily.
>
--- End Quote ---
Although you are of course correct that an IP address doesn't
identify an individual, on its own, it is regarded as an "online
identifier" under GDPR, and "online identifiers" do legally
constitute personal data.
An IP address, combined with other information, can after all be
used to distinguish one person from another, and thus to
identify an individual.
After all, if you think about it, a name doesn't identify an
individual. There are thousands of John Smiths, to take the
usual example. But combine the name with an address, or a
telephone number, or height, or birthdate, and you can tell one
from John Smith from another and thus identify an individual.
The point being that "personal data" isn't necessarily data that
identifies a person on its own.
#Post#: 91355--------------------------------------------------
Re: Councils' acquisition of one's IP address when visiting
their websites.
DIR By: sparx
Date: September 24, 2025, 2:13 pm
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Interestingly though, this largely will depend on the
infrastructure their website (or PCN "portal") is hosted on.
For instance, when the old PPP domain was going to expire, I had
built a "reverse proxy" site so that it could still be accessed.
The very nature of this meant that the PPP forum software only
saw my reverse proxy's address and not the end users (this was
never needed as they renewed the domain then killed the forum...
oh well)
If the portal is hosted behind a reverse proxy, and that reverse
proxy or the portal software is misconfigured, then the portal
may never see any other IP addresses other than it's own
infrastructure, hence the "You've not looked at it".
Not to mention that most mobile data comes out on a limited
range of IP addresses (ever had the "You've already viewed 3
articles today" on newspaper sites on mobile data?).
In the short term, I guess that it is prudent that you print to
pdf a copy of the portal site so you can contradict their
statements in future?
#Post#: 91638--------------------------------------------------
Re: Councils' acquisition of one's IP address when visiting
their websites.
DIR By: dannyno
Date: September 26, 2025, 9:12 am
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I suppose if anything is going to be misconfigured, it's a
council website.
#Post#: 91707--------------------------------------------------
Re: Councils' acquisition of one's IP address when visiting
their websites.
DIR By: Hippocrates
Date: September 27, 2025, 6:23 am
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LPS would expect a seasoned formal representative such as Mr
James Bond to have foresight enough that were he to view an
issue that relates to his appellants PCN, that he would record
this supposed issue. Except in this circumstance, Mr Bond has
viewed no such issue on this PCN and has made a statement he
knows not to be true as he has clearly not been privy to the PCN
website on this PCN prior to appeal, hence the lack of actual
evidence against this PCN.
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