the talk about "ip addresses and privacy" going on rn is hilarious to me because literally any post on this web site that embeds external media will leak your ip address. like images. this also works in the sidebar too, so all of those cute 88×31 buttons in people's profile? yep, your ip address has been logged
i just got your ip address. yoink! there is nothing you can do about it (other than use a vpn or disable images).
back in fucking literal 2001 a program called Methodus 2000, a script-kiddie application for losers, had an "IP stealer" function that would give you a link to paste and would show any IP addresses that loaded it (since it ran off of your connection)
13 years later, everything old is new again
this is a real and serious concern, which everyone should take seriously
it is also the status quo.
we would love to be back in a world where websites are designed without the need to load third-party resources. the only reason that ever became normal is that corporations are highly incentivized to offer their products in a form that relies on their servers, precisely so that they can get user data out of it.
