Correct me if I'm wrong but ISPs dynamically assign WAN IPs to the vast majority of their non-enterprise consumer base, right? If that's the case, how would historical posts on 4chan have any relevant data to dox someone with? Wouldn't the window of opportunity have passed for pretty much everything older than a few weeks?

[–] andrew@lemmy.stuart.fun 36 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

It's not super useful for doxing by normies necessarily but you better believe ISPs also log which customer gets which IP and keep that historical data (because they can definitely send copyright notices for torrent seeding) and law enforcement can subpoena or sometimes just ask nicely for historical IP data.

And that's a dangerous thing when regimes come to power and want certain speech squashed, especially if you believe you're reasonably anonymized.

[–] dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 8 points 3 weeks ago

ISPs also log which customer gets which IP and keep that historical data

I can confirm that not only is this true, but it's been this way since the 1990's. The metadata correlates the IP address, date/time information, and customer account number. It's highly likely that any given ISP will have this data going back years, if not decades. It really doesn't take up much space.

I can also confirm the "just ask nicely" part. I've seen it with my own eyes that it really comes down the scruples of the people guarding said data. There exists no law that prevents that information from being disclosed to anyone.

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