A local newspaper has a policy not to allow two different handles from the same IP address to comment in agreement with each other in response to an article on which comment is allowed.

The question has come up as to what personal information can be inferred from knowledge of the originating IP address. My guess is that absent access to the ISP's records, the IP address in and of itself cannot be identified to an individual person or household, or even a street address.

Right or wrong?

Depending on what "sharing" is in place with respect to the originating registration, it may be possible for the newspaper's moderator to access profile information which can include personal identification. If "sharing" is turned off, would that foreclose access to such information?

David

The stated policy is idiotic because a single IP address can be used by thousands of different people at the same time or at different times, including people at different locations.

Also, it's pretty easy for most Internet users to get a different IP address to use, either by forcing a reassignment of an IP address or simply using dial-up access to the Internet and calling a different access number.

Some of us have dedicated, fixed IP addresses and some information can be learned by looking up the registration information for that assigned IP address. See, for example:

http://www.whois-search.com/

If you want to see the sort of information available for your own IP address at this moment, go to:

http://whatismyipaddress.com

But remember that with very little difficulty your apparent IP address can be hidden, cloaked, redirected, or faked.

Jeff/CompGuy

Jeff, thanks. My IP address geography puts me in a tidal creek inside a Nature Conservancy preserve.

As for idiotic policies, the 30-something dudes and dudettes that make them up at the newspaper are, to borrow a line from "Bambi," twitterpated. They're infatuated with social networks and online interaction, but fail utterly to understand that a website is not a newspaper. Ironically, a paper they used to publish was the top 2010 award-winner at the New York Press Association spring convention about 6 weeks ago, and they shut its print edition down to concentrate on the web.

David

It's pretty amusing because my IP address indicates that I'm 175 miles away in another city. I haven't moved and I'm not doing anything tricky. I suspected this was going on because I keep getting ads for restaurants and such in the other city.

I have a friend who lives near Niagara Falls. He's in the U. S.--but his IP address shows up as in Canada. He keeps getting rejected from making purchases because his shipping address isn't in Canada but the Web sites think he is.

Jeff/CompGuy