Hidding your indentity
 

I find it dumb that almost EVERYBODY with RC can view a players attributes via getting there IP Address.

An IP Address should be private, with it you can get there location, phone number and much more. The only person who should be allowed to view your IP address should be the Manager and/or Co-Manager, those two are more trustworthy than the random FAQ.

Take testbed server for example, you get RC upon request. Another easy way to get a player's IP.

Not sure if I'm going to get flamed or not but.. just in case!

*FLAME SHIELD ACTIVATED*

Incorrect.

You cannot identify a single person through an IP, and you certainly cannot get their exact location or telephone number. They can be used to place people on a map, normally within 10-50 miles.

There is no reason to worry about your IP. Virtually anyone can see your IP. It's possible to send a mass PM with an image in it, and when that image is viewed, your IP is logged to their webserver. They could even use a clever message code trick to match that IP to the account.

IPs are not private, the argument has been made many times. Every single website logs your IP.

I can get your IP by sending you to my website. Big deal? IPs are not Social Security numbers.

Not everyone can get RC on Testbed. In fact, I deny several requests per day. I interview each person I add and make sure their interests are in the right place.

Actually...
someone has already gotten a players phone number with there IP-Adress.
Also, you can get a good idea were they live, using particular sites which locates the IP-Adress :)

If someone owns an IP address and has their phone number registered to it, they know what they are doing anyway and do not need your pity.

According to which I live in the goddamn Netherlands. Who cares.

I was just suggesting something, relax.
Dammit, no wonder I activated my Flame-Shield.

You act like people are actually interested in your personal information

The "IP address is your identity" myth is somewhat hilarious. For most people in the world, you are allocated a new IP address from a DHCP pool every time you connect to the Internet. In this instance, the IP address that you may have had yesterday could have been reused by 6 different people since.

With the WHOIS information behind an IP address, you can probably find out what country/state/province an IP address belongs to, and the ISP who provides your internet connection, but not a lot else. Thinking you can reliably find someone's location with IP addresses is actually quite foolish, though, seeing as my IP address makes me out to be some 200 miles away from where I actually am.

Every time you visit a website on the Internet, your IP address is usually being logged by the webserver. Every time you log into AIM or MSN, your IP address is probably being logged. The fact of the matter is that there's not a lot anyone can do with your IP address.

The only problem this might cause for Graal (which as far as I see it, is the only reason we don't have a publicly accessible player.ip variable) is that it might make it easier to work out whether different accounts are actually the same person; perhaps someone would not like others to know for some reason that they own both or multiple accounts. However, this does not strike me to be a large problem. Even though people might be able to figure out that two accounts are used by the same person, it still does not tell anyone who you actually are.

So, now that we've established that IP addresses are actually quite safe, you can live on knowing that you won't be axe-murdered by Graal players with GPS units and too much free time.