You've seen this message:

Warning! your computer is currently broadcasting an IP address. With this someone could begin attacking your computer!

I was wondering, is there a way to tell if a link will make your computer do this before you click on it?

Never mind that warning, get a firewall and most people can't hack you anyhow (and for the people who can you aren't important enough) :)

The reaon I was asking was that I sometimes browse at work, and I'd rather not braodcast such information to the world. The question has been answered in other places, but I'm sure other people would want to know.

If you don't want people tracing you at work, then you need to find a PROXY server to connect your browser through.

The reason for this is the trace can then be stopped at the PROXY server, and then only legal channels have the ability to force the turn over of records.

This is a better method, because it will seem your surf is occuring from the proxy.

Hiding your IP up isn't totally possible purely because your connection relies upon information knowing where it's going to (It's destination).

If you hid your IP it wouldn't know where it's going, if you spoofed your IP then any information you requested would be sent to the wrong computer (The IP you spoofed).

Firewalls are useful from stopping internal applications and drivers connecting OUT from your machine without your authority. (Useful if you've got a trojan).

Firewalls can also stop ports being opened from external locations, like someone trying to turn the trojan on that's listening to a port.

(Just make sure you have ANTIVIRUS or ANTITROJAN software installed, to make sure your firewall doesn't have anything loaded into it, or you might find it running a trojan when it's on.

Also check ANY files that come through e-mail with anti-virii/trojan software. Perhaps if you use outlook express, you should go into the options and tell it not to automatically open/download the files.)

Surely broadcasting out our IP address is breach of privacy

I open sciforums and it doesn't pop the sign up, and the base does have a proxy. But why do some site do and some don't?

All websites can get your IP, some will tell you and some won't.

Porfiry can get your IP, afterall thats a feature in the BBS code to stop people Spamming and attacking.

I have a server up with CGI where I can use a very simple piece of PERL script to get your IP (not to forget what page was the last in your History, namely where you came from/last place you surfed, or what browser your using)

The reason for the IP being found like this is to protect the servers, afterall I can with my server (as can Porfiry) ban a singular IP or a whole IP range (Class A 255.#.#.# thru C 255.255.255.#)

In Porfiry's case that can stop abusers of the board from posting in that range, in my case that could be stopping attacks from Nimda that regularly appear in my logs from the same addresses, or banning those Robots that search out e-mail addresses through datamining.

Most people though that get banned from a site, will use a proxy to hide who they are, which is pretty much a misuse, since it's idea was to stop Rogue sites collecting your information.

IP's are also useful for identifying people, for instance there are cookies that can be written to your computer, but with a server-side variant you could log into a site and that will track you movements from that point by IP without loading anything to your system.

If your really complaintive about your privacy on the internet, then only go to sites that give you a Privacy statement like in the UK a mention of the DATA PROTECTION ACT would suffice (although they might lie, but can be liable for lieing)

As for sciforums not popping it up, well at one point it probably did, but if your intranet has Sciforums going through a proxy/cache server because of the amount of accesses that hit it, then it's probably has an access rule written where the other sites are one offs.

Thanks. I was told that the computer at work was safe because whenever you log in in changes the IP, so the broadcast of the ip address is only a problem if you stay hooked up for extended periods of time. It also goes through a server(computer to ethernet server to internet), so the computer wasn't really in trouble. It's still disturbing to see that message though.

that message usually comes in a popup window..

NEVER EVER click on commercial popup windows and you'll be safe! well, reasonably safe. with a firewall.