E.U. Regulator: IP Addresses Are Personal Data

An IP address, or an Internet Protocol, is a standard that allows computers to communicate over a network. This address is not just limited to computers, but many other business machines – printers, scanners, and even some telephones – have IP addresses integrated, as well. An IP address helps these machines communicate with each other, acting as a locater, not necessarily a unique identifier of the machine. Many computers and such technologies using IP addresses actually use dynamic assignment, constantly updating and changing their IP addresses automatically or with the help of software.

Whether or not knowing an IP address of a user to some of this equipment could be personal data, Peter Shar, Germany’s data-protection commissioner, says this kind of information should stay private. This kind of information could potential identify a user of a computer.

However, many competitors of Shar’s thoughts, especially that of the number 1 internet search engine, Google, say that a machines IP address is absolutely irrelevant to personal identity. An IP address tracks a computer’s location, not the person staring at the monitor. Imagine computers at internet cafes and coffee shops. With hundreds of people coming and going every day, you would never be able to track one person down with the computer’s IP address.

Google says it collects IP address data only to help improve their search rankings. Using the IP address as a locater, they can figure out what language and where the results of their search terms should be coming from. An example given would be the term football. A New York searcher would find terms about American football games, or maybe even New York football. Someone looking up football in London would find English football, or soccer, website results.

Shar says there is still cause for concern. Privacy policy information is very hard to access and understand and thinks there are ways to improve upon this. MSN is already showing signs of this by not actually collecting IP data, but by allowing users to sign in using their “Passport” feature, enabling them to get more defined search results.