IP addresses in Bitcointalk - Addressed to the MODS & Admins

[aTriz]

Hello everyone, had a couple of things on my mind so would like to get an answer to them.

Firstly, just to clarify, if your password/email is changed, there will be an email sent to your old email address with the ip of where it was changed correct? And with an IP address, you can find the approximate location of someone (provided they aren't using an VPN), correct?

If so, why do scammers not have their ip leaked? If changing the password of your account is all that is needed for the ip to be given to you, why aren't the ips of people who've stolen a shit ton of money leaked?

Seems a bit weird in my opinion. IPs get leaked for an account hack, but not for people who've scammed thousands?

I'd like to hear your opinions, especially the mods.

[minifrij]

If so, why do scammers not have their ip leaked? If changing the password of your account is all that is needed for the ip to be given to you, why aren't the ips of people who've stolen a shit ton of money leaked?

Because an IP address is worthless information. The most information that it can give is the ISP that the affected user is doing, and that is completely invalidated if the user is using a public WiFi hotspot or a VPN.
Not only that, but that IP may not even represent the user behind it properly. Even if I don't use the things I just mentioned, all I have to do is restart my router to get a new IP.

There is absolutely nothing that anyone can do with an IP address, and therefore it is not worth the trouble for an administrator to try and dig it up.

[Str1x]

IP address is only for governments I think. It works for them to catch you in case of lawless things

If you took 1 min to read the post above yours, you would know that claim is nonsense. An IP address doesn't have to be linked to the real user/scammer/hacker. You can use TOR/VPN to mask yourself. Even though some VPN providers have logs, so it can lead back to the user, however there are still VPN providers that don't store logs. Than you have the use of public WIFI (for example burgerking wifi) this will lead to nothing.... Than you have the possibility to RAT a victim, use his IP and do whatever you want.

You can leak the ip address of scammers, however for every perma-ban an IP address gets evil points. I don't know the exact calculation, but after x evil points the IP addres is blacklisted and can only get whitelisted after paying a donation in BTC.

[ImHash]

Do you know anything about protocol 4 and 6? 4 was giving billions of IP addresses, Now 6 is giving even more IP addresses

[Thekool1s]

Well ips are pretty much worthless as isps assign them to random users every 24 hours in most cases. Unless scammer's isp is keeping logs, there isn't much an internet user can do. If you put the scammer's ip in a trace back services they will lead you back to the isp's server location, not the user location. Afterwards you will need some sort of permission from the police or higher authority to allow you to see their logs and trace back the user. So it's alot of trouble to go through especially for scams which don't involve much money, but for amounts greater than 5 BTC it totally makes sense to go after the scammers.

[dillpicklechips]

If so, why do scammers not have their ip leaked? If changing the password of your account is all that is needed for the ip to be given to you, why aren't the ips of people who've stolen a shit ton of money leaked?

Because an IP address is worthless information. The most information that it can give is the ISP that the affected user is doing, and that is completely invalidated if the user is using a public WiFi hotspot or a VPN.
Not only that, but that IP may not even represent the user behind it properly. Even if I don't use the things I just mentioned, all I have to do is restart my router to get a new IP.

I concur. Changing IP from time to time is very common nowadays. You can just download a fee VPN or just restart your router as you said.

There is absolutely nothing that anyone can do with an IP address, and therefore it is not worth the trouble for an administrator to try and dig it up.

As we know, there are scammers who just keeps coming back even if their account is banned and also their IPs. This is a fact. All you need to do is just change your IP and you can start anew.

In other words, it is pretty useless to publicize scammer's IP. Also, only admins have the access (IIRC, hilariousandco said that somewhere) to view user's IP and we know that they are a lot of scammers here which will be two (admins) to dig the IPs of a myriad scammers out there.