IP Addresses Are Personal Data, E.U. Regulator Says

Unlike electrical current, data packets must identify source and destination locations to be useful.  IP addresses identify endpoints for internet bits.  Privacy concerns involve the top ISO layer where applications live.  Don't hobble transport providers with application responsibilities.  

The recent ruling by the EU regulator is important because: 1.  Every internet connected device will have an IP address.  2. The impact is well beyond computers and will extend to cell phones as the 3rd/4th generation networks get rolled out. 3. Any service that is operating based on user location information will be impacted

IP addressing is dynamic and simply a the primary means of assigning a networking session identification for routing communication traffic from a unique networked device.  EU ruling could be interpreted to have future implications of individually assigned IP addresses.

I disagree with the title of the article. IP addresses are not personal data. Personal data is a SSN or medical data. Something that pertains to a particular person and only that person. I liken IP addresses to phone numbers or home addresses. This is not personal information because it does not follow you when you move. That phone number or address is tied to a particular location or area. In the...

I think that businesses should be legally obliged, not just because of legislation, corporate governance or trust towards their clients to safeguard certain if not all information relating to their own busines, that of their partners and clients (business or private). It will impact businesses worldwide but with the danger of both cyber crime and national security growing on monthly bases it is the...

The end user doesn't own the IP address and therefore it can not be considered personal property.

If the IP address cannot be refenced to a real person, it can't be personal information. It doesn't matter how long or how little one person uses the same address, unless they have their own assigned block of addess', the address they use in no sense belongs to them. The description of whois databases and the supposed "emergence" of them is extremely inaccurate. Wikipedia indicates that whois has...

Regulators' expertise is policy and politics, not technology; they know not what they do.  That doesn't matter because the political imperatives are irresistible.  Businesses should seek other ways, as they have with Social Security numbers, to identify users or computers.