Question of privacy with reassigned resources

Thu Aug 5 12:04:47 UTC 2010

On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 4:25 AM, Steven Bellovin <smb at cs.columbia.edu> wrote:
> Clearly, the apartment complex owners could do that if
>they so choose.  I'm not sure who you suggest should
>"buy a box from mail boxes etc. yourself and set up
>mail forwarding each time you set up a new apartment
>complex" -- the ISP?  How does that help?  This is, as
>you say, a way to contact the apartment complex owners, right?

Steven,

Getting a post office box is a standard and widely accepted way to
receive mail when for any reason you don't want the mail addressed to
your physical location. Companies like Mail Boxes Etc. take the
service one step further - they'll repackage the received mail and
send it to your physical address so you don't have to stop by and
check the box. Essentially, they provide a second postal address for
the recipient unbound from the recipient's physical address.

That's what you wanted, right? To avoid revealing the resource
consumer's physical address?

> The issues have to do with knowledge and expenditure.
>For the most part, consumers and apartment complex
>owners have no knowledge of IP geolocation or SWIP.
>It is consumer privacy at risk here, but consumers have
>no opportunity to opt out of this scheme even if they
>knew about it.  "Discuss it with the apartment complex"
>is generally null advice; apart from the fact that consumers
>have exactly zero leverage in many markets, the apartment
>managers (a) don't know about it, either, and (b) can't be
>bothered to get a PO box and collect the (rare) mail from it.

If you feel that way, I suggest you take the issue up on the ARIN
public policy mailing list. Solicit public consensus for a change in
handling for SWIPs for "apartment complexes as ISP resellers." Absent
such a change, redacting identity and contact info for the apartment
management company remains simple fraud.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

-- 
William D. Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/>
Falls Church, VA 22042-3004