An IP address uniquely identifies a person. -- I never claimed to the contrary.
This serves as a useful reflection of the data we leave on websites -- totally true but I think it's actually superior than alternatives for sharing useful things like links! :)
If you find UI and noise insufferable like I do, you would appreciate how beneficial something like this is at requiring someone to submit something either no quality, or high quality.
So at around the 2:19:00 mark in this recording [1] you mention that the app is a “business card”. But a business card has a unique identity attached to it, verified by the act of handing it to someone else.
An IP address can never be a business card because it fails to uniquely identify a person. If you’re sharing a VPN exit node with 10 people, there is no way to differentiate them on that tool.
You also mention around that same time that the tool can be used to prove that you know something. This isn’t exactly true. You can prove that you’re on the same network as the person who knows some information but that’s not as strong a knowledge claim.
One way you could get around this issue (although still not 100% foolproof) is browser fingerprinting. Your identity is the hash of your browser fingerprint.
>One way you could get around this issue (although still not 100% foolproof) is browser fingerprinting. Your identity is the hash of your browser fingerprint.
Congratulations. You just conflated the user-agent for the user.
Stop. Doing. That.
People are flesh and blood.
Browser fingerprints are bundles of configuration and hardware quirks, that if we actually implemented browsers correctly, would not even allow you access to half the API's that are otherwise exposed without actively notifying the user and asking the user for permission while making it clear that most of said activity is essentially a way to offload computation burden for the "developer's" benefit.
