Finding out IP's with images

**signic** · August 28th, 2010, 3:49 PM

Is it possible to to find out the IP of somebody when you host a picture on your webhost, then embed the image somewhere for example a forum? What would I need to do this feat? I know Statcounter uses an image to track visitors so that's what I'm talking about.

I tried to search for this in Google but did not gave any conclusive directions of which program to use on a webhost.

**hooperman** · August 28th, 2010, 5:33 PM

Not sure what you mean signic. Are you trying to find out if anyone is hotlinking to your image? If so, they do show up as backlinks.

**ClaytonL** · August 29th, 2010, 7:03 AM

Well any image that is downloaded from your server is going to be logged in your raw server logs along with the ip. You could use a server log analyzer to view it. If you want to get a lot more technical, you can make a specific log with PHP. It would consist of a PHP script that logged the ip before serving the image up as content. Example.

**signic** · August 29th, 2010, 9:05 AM

Originally Posted by hooperman

Not sure what you mean signic. Are you trying to find out if anyone is hotlinking to your image? If so, they do show up as backlinks.

I'm not even sure if it's legal. I'm talking about a way to discover IP's of people through images they download from your webserver.

**Clinton** · August 30th, 2010, 10:39 AM

I'm still not sure I understand what you mean, signic.

If you just want to find out which IP downloaded which picture from your site, it's simple - look in your logs (see ClaytonL's post). Are you looking for the names of the people who've done the downloading?

**tke71709** · August 30th, 2010, 10:51 AM

I assume that he wants to post an image to a forum, and then use that image to harvest the IPs of all the people who view that image.

Kind of like NickyCakes did on WickedFire for his landing page privacy program.

**benitez17** · August 30th, 2010, 4:14 PM

Originally Posted by tke71709

I assume that he wants to post an image to a forum, and then use that image to harvest the IPs of all the people who view that image.

Kind of like NickyCakes did on WickedFire for his landing page privacy program.

If that's the case, then ClaytonL's comment about logging the information and parsing it should explain all he needs to know.

signic, why would this be illegal? If a computer is accessing your server, it does so with its IP address. An IP address isn't a secret.

**Clinton** · August 31st, 2010, 6:38 AM

I don't know about it being illegal but I would be uncomfortable with anyone hotlinking an image here to track who is viewing a thread. I'm even more convinced now that our rule 7 (no hotlinking) is a good one. If hotlinking were allowed it's not difficult for a member to then work out some IPs of other members and then their location / other info and stats like global distribution of forum visitors and more. Not the greatest privacy breach, but sneaky all the same. The reason I had the rule originally was more to protect against dead links/copyright breaches.

But if the forum owner allows hotlinking, I don't see why you can't use it.

**benitez17** · August 31st, 2010, 8:08 AM

Originally Posted by Clinton

I don't know about it being illegal but I would be uncomfortable with anyone hotlinking an image here to track who is viewing a thread. I'm even more convinced now that our rule 7 (no hotlinking) is a good one. If hotlinking were allowed it's not difficult for a member to then work out some IPs of other members and then their location / other info and stats like global distribution of forum visitors and more. Not the greatest privacy breach, but sneaky all the same. The reason I had the rule originally was more to protect against dead links/copyright breaches.

But if the forum owner allows hotlinking, I don't see why you can't use it.

I can see why a forum owner wouldn't like the idea, but it's brilliant if you are considering purchasing a site. If you have a list of known bot IP addresses and filter them out, you can get a nice picture of the location of the visitors and number of visitors by seeing who is downloading that image.

**signic** · September 4th, 2010, 5:01 PM

Originally Posted by tke71709

I assume that he wants to post an image to a forum, and then use that image to harvest the IPs of all the people who view that image.

Kind of like NickyCakes did on WickedFire for his landing page privacy program.

This sounds interesting, do you have a link?

Originally Posted by Clinton

I don't know about it being illegal but I would be uncomfortable with anyone hotlinking an image here to track who is viewing a thread. I'm even more convinced now that our rule 7 (no hotlinking) is a good one. If hotlinking were allowed it's not difficult for a member to then work out some IPs of other members and then their location / other info and stats like global distribution of forum visitors and more. Not the greatest privacy breach, but sneaky all the same. The reason I had the rule originally was more to protect against dead links/copyright breaches.

But if the forum owner allows hotlinking, I don't see why you can't use it.

I thought it was like cookie stuffing, thus illegal. The visitors agreed to be logged from the website owner, not a forum participant

Originally Posted by benitez17

If that's the case, then ClaytonL's comment about logging the information and parsing it should explain all he needs to know.

signic, why would this be illegal? If a computer is accessing your server, it does so with its IP address. An IP address isn't a secret.

I don't even know what parsing is, im quite a noob