FYI to the ISP community. In Today's issue of Commsday International - July 10 2009, Page 2 and 3 sidebar IP ADDRESSES ARE NOT PERSONAL OR PRIVATE A US federal judge has ruled IP addresses do not constitute personal information, establishing a legal precedent that could radically alter Internet privacy norms. Presiding over a class action lawsuit against Microsoft, US District Court judge Richard Jones defended the company's collection of customers' IP addresses during software updates as fair and reasonable despite a user agreement promising not to hoover up identifying data. "In order for 'personally identifiable information' to be personally identifiable, it must identify a person. But an IP address identifies a computer," Jones wrote in a dismissal. The ruling underlines the lack of federal guidance on the issue, with US courts handing out a series of contradictory decisions piecemeal over the last few years. Just last month a New Jersey court determined surfers had a reasonable right to assume their IP addresses would be kept private and barred ISPs from disclosing them to third parties without a subpoena. The New York Times made headlines three years ago when it proved "anonymous" IP addresses provided by AOL would be tied to specific surfers. -- Skeeve Stevens, CEO/Technical Director eintellego Pty Ltd - The Networking Specialists skeeve(a)eintellego.net / www.eintellego.net Phone: 1300 753 383, Fax: (+612) 8572 9954 Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 / skype://skeeve www.linkedin.com/in/skeeve ; facebook.com/eintellego -- NOC, NOC, who's there? Disclaimer: Limits of Liability and Disclaimer: This message is for the named person's use only. It may contain sensitive and private proprietary or legally privileged information. You must not, directly or indirectly, use, disclose, distribute, print, or copy any part of this message if you are not the intended recipient. eintellego Pty Ltd and each legal entity in the Tefilah Pty Ltd group of companies reserve the right to monitor all e-mail communications through its networks. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the message states otherwise and the sender is authorised to state them to be the views of any such entity. Any reference to costs, fee quotations, contractual transactions and variations to contract terms is subject to separate confirmation in writing signed by an authorised representative of eintellego. Whilst all efforts are made to safeguard inbound and outbound e-mails, we cannot guarantee that attachments are virus-free or compatible with your systems and do not accept any liability in respect of viruses or computer problems experienced.