You can't correlate the number of addresses with the number of devices because IPv6 temporary addresses exist. If you enable temporary addresses, your computer will periodically randomly generate a new address and switch to it.

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8981.html

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saltcured 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I feel like this is a silly narrowing of the problem for normal, retail users. My priority isn't masking "the number of addresses" or devices. My desire is to not have a persistent identifier to correlate all my traffic. The whole idea of temporary addresses fails at this because the network prefix becomes the correlation ID.

I'm not an IPv4 apologist though. Clearly the NAT/DHCP assignments from the ISP are essentially the same risk, with just one shallow layer of pseudo-obscurity. I'd rather have IPv6 and remind myself that my traffic is tagged with my customer ID, one way or another.

Unfortunately, I see no real hope that this will ever be mitigated. Incentives are not aligned for any ISP to actually help mask customer traffic. It seems that onion routing (i.e. Tor) is the best anyone has come up with, and I suspect that in today's world, this has become a net liability for a mundane, privacy-conscious user.

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throw0101c 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> My desire is to not have a persistent identifier to correlate all my traffic.

Reboot your router. Asus (with the vendor firmware) allows you do this in a scheduled manner. You'll get a new IPv4 WAN IP (for your NAT stuff) and (with most ISPs) a new IPV6 prefix.

As it stands, if you think NAT hides an individual device, you may have a false sense of security (PDF):

* https://oasis.library.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1...

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ronsor 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> The whole idea of temporary addresses fails at this because the network prefix becomes the correlation ID.

So the same as the public IPv4 on a traditional home NAT setup?

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graemep 2 days ago | parent [-]

Most home users do not have a static public IPv4 address - they have a single address that changes over time.

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db48x 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

But most ISPs aren’t giving out static IPv6 prefixes either. Instead they are collecting logs of what addresses they’ve handed out to which customer and holding on to them for years and years in case a court requests them. Tracking visitors doesn’t need to use ip addresses simply because it’s trivial to do so with cookies or browser fingerprinting. There’s exactly zero privacy either way.

	▲	graemep a day ago \| parent [-]
		> Instead they are collecting logs of what addresses they’ve handed out to which customer and holding on to them for years and years in case a court requests them. They are only supposed to hang on to them for a limited time according to the law where I live (six months AFAIK). Courts are also unwilling to accept IPv4 addresses as proof of identity. > Tracking visitors doesn’t need to use ip addresses simply because it’s trivial to do so with cookies or browser fingerprinting Cookies can be deleted. Browser fingerprinting can be made unreliable. Its not zero privacy either way. Privacy is not a binary. Giving out more information reduces your privacy.

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throw0101c 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Most home users do not have a static public IPv4 address - they have a single address that changes over time.

I'd be curious to know the statistics on this: I would hazard to guess that for most ISPs, if your router/modem does not reboot, your IPv4 address (and IPv6 prefix) will not change.

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jrm4 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"If you enable" is doing ALL THE HEAVY LIFTING THERE.

Again, my point isn't about what is possible, but what is likely. -- which is MUCH MORE IMPORTANT for the real world.

If we'd started out in an IPv6 world, the defaults would have been "easy to discover unique addresses" and it's reasonable to think that would have made "pay per device" or other negatives that much easier.

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craftkiller 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Temporary addresses are enabled by default in OSX, windows, android, and iOS. That's what, like 95% of the consumer non-server market? As for Linux, that's going to be up to each distro to decide what their defaults are. It looks like they are _not_ the default on FreeBSD, which makes sense because that OS is primarily targeting servers (even though I use it on my laptop).

	▲	zekica 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Temporary addresses are used by any Linux distro using NetworkManager (all desktop ones). For server distros, it can differ.
	▲	Levitating 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		In Gnome it's just a toggle in the network settings

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password4321 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> ALL THE HEAVY LIFTING THERE

> MUCH MORE IMPORTANT

I haven't done the exhaustive research but props in advance for being the only person shouting in caps on HN. Definitely one way to proclaim one's not AI-ness without forced spelling errors.

	▲	jrm4 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Didn't even think about that. Interesting.

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electronsoup 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

and most OS do enable it by default

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2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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