I did a quick search and it does look possible. I contacted a local tech guy and he replied "You cannot completely hide your IP on the net. You can use a VPN to encrypt your traffic however. Most VPN services have a monthly subscription to use their service". Is that correct?
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Hide it from whom? The Chinese? <joke> More importantly, for what purpose? The so-called "darknet" and anonymity services like Tor (of which I only have passing knowledge) might give you some tools for doing this. But, just like making large cash deposits at your bank, the very fact that you are trying to "hide" the IP address might make you appear suspicious to any number of observers.
A good site for online security in general is https://www.schneier.com/, a recent listing of news items from the monthly newsletter includes:
Volkswagen and Cheating Software
Living in a Code Yellow World
Obama Administration Not Pursuing a Backdoor to Commercial Encryption
News
Stealing Fingerprints
Automatic Face Recognition and Surveillance
Schneier News
Resilient Systems News
Bringing Frozen Liquids through Airport Security
SHA-1 Freestart Collision
A VPN doesn't hide your external IP, but it might allow you to encrypt data, but the system at the other end also needs to use your same encryption, so that won't be very practical in most cases when you want to communicate with anyone but yourself.
Be aware that for tax filing, new anti-ID-theft procedures include "Reviewing the transmission of the tax return, including the improper and or repetitive use of Internet Protocol numbers, the Internet ‘address’ from which the return is originating. Reviewing computer device identification data tied to the return’s origin."
So, even if you somehow mask or redirect your IP address, the device ID of your computer will still be captured."You said it, they'll never know the difference. Come on, we'll paint our way out!" - Moe Howard -
The IRS will be using IP address to determine the efile location for returns. This is tied to their efforts on ID theft investigations. If you hide it your efiles may reject.Believe nothing you have not personally researched and verified.Comment
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No, they don't use the IP address. They use other Identification information of your computer.Originally posted by taxea View Post
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Can't
TAXEA is correct. Can't have one without the other. Now back to the Tax World.Originally posted by TaxGuyBill View PostAlways cite your source for support to defend your opinionComment
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The IP address has been included in e-file data for a long time. I don't know if they used it or not for identity theft purposes - I'd hope they used it but ... they did make a ton of direct deposits to the same account and mailed a ton of refunds to the same address so who knows.
The Device ID that TaxGuyBill is new and is specifically being created to help with identity theft. Unlike an IP address that can change the Device ID is tied to the actual computer. What that means is if you try to hide the origin of a tax return by using the wifi at Starbucks or something like that they'll still be able to associate the returns with that specific computer. Say a computer sends 2,000 tax returns and they catch on to the fact that computer is sending identity theft returns, they could then flag all future returns received from the same computer as likely identity theft / fraud. I believe their intent is something along those lines.
Also if a computer was confiscated it'd give the law enforcement folks a way to connect that computer to the returns filed. Even if they reformatted the drive and such. But I haven't seen anyone talk about that - just "to improve fraud and ID theft detection".Comment
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Bill
Think TAXEA is correct.Originally posted by TaxGuyBill View Post
Look at an Excerpt from THE TCP/IP GUIDE:
Internet IP Address Structure
"........... we refer to the IP address we use a dotted-decimal notation, while the computer converts this into binary. However, even though these sets of 32 bits are considered a single “entity”, they have an internal structure containing two components:
Network Identifier (Network ID): A certain number of bits, starting from the left-most bit, is used to identify the network where the host or other network interface is located. This is also sometimes called the network prefix or even just the prefix.
Host Identifier (Host ID): The remainder of the bits are used to identify the host on the network."Always cite your source for support to defend your opinionComment
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You guys are right, the IP address is part of the e-file.
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ERO's IP address
It's my understanding that, by going though my normal ATT U-verse provider, I have a dynamic ( means not static ) IP address.Originally posted by TaxGuyBill View Post
How does that scenario figure into this discussion? ? ?
FEComment
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It would still be interesting to hear from the OP from whom he wants to hide the IP address, and why.
Just because the IP address is part of the XML MeF spec, doesn't mean it's being accurately populated, for example viewing an actual efile through my software, we can see in 2014 it was not:
<SoftwareId>ULTRATAX</SoftwareId>
<SoftwareVersionNum>14.3.3</SoftwareVersionNum>
-<InternetProtocol>
<IPAddress>255.255.255.255</IPAddress>
<IPTimestamp>1969-07-21T02:56:15Z</IPTimestamp>
</InternetProtocol>
I believe the new agreement between IRS and the tax software industry aims to coordinate and standardize the population of this field, which previously was haphazard.
The post above about how the TCP/IP address is constructed is not relevant to the discussion. In the modern world, a SOHO (small office/home office) user will have one dynamic IP address showing to outside world, and any number of internal addresses using NAT (network address translation) which you can read all about at Wikipedia, for example.
The dynamic external address will not normally change unless you are off the network completely for an extended period of time (not just during a power outage, for example), so that is not a problem, plus I'm sure your ISP has logs indicating what dynamic address was assigned to your subnet at any given time, which I'm sure could be obtained by court order even if your ISP doesn't just voluntarily give it up when asked. Way back around the turn of the century, I actually had "real" static IP addresses assigned via my ISP (at the time known as PacBell) at my house, but almost no one except larger corporations or other entities would have any of those today, as they have basically all been used up. IPv6 is slowly becoming the new global standard, with way more than just 4 billion unique addresses available under IPv4, so maybe someday we will go back to everyone getting a static IPv6 address.
The IRS has explicitly said they will use both IP and device ID, as I quoted above, so why would someone claim they are not going to use the IP address?
The device ID is not new at all (it's how Microsoft has been authenticating their Windows licenses for some time now), but what's new is the IRS and software vendors using the info intelligently."You said it, they'll never know the difference. Come on, we'll paint our way out!" - Moe HowardComment
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If you examine the IRS link previously posted, you will find this: "The IRS will reject individual income tax returns e-filed without the required IP address. Any return received by the IRS containing a private/non-routable IP address will be flagged in the Acknowledgement File with an “R” in the Reserved IP Address Code field of the ACK key record indicating that a reserved IP address is present for the return"
The example I posted above is a private/non-routable IP address. This is what I suspect will change for 2016 filing season.
To summarize, no one using the Internet can HIDE their IP address, the best they could try to do, using "darknet" type tools, is fake it to be something other than the real one.
Also, the device ID depends on various hardware components of the computer. Replace the physical harddrive may or may not be enough trigger a different unique device ID."You said it, they'll never know the difference. Come on, we'll paint our way out!" - Moe HowardComment
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In depth RAPID
When you say:
The post above about how the TCP/IP address is constructed is not relevant to the discussion. In the modern world, a SOHO (small office/home office) user will have one dynamic IP address showing to outside world, and any number of internal addresses using NAT (network address translation) which you can read all about at Wikipedia, for example.
Think TCP/IP manual is more reliable than any Wikipedia post.
So bottom line, both IP and ID needed as TAXEA and TAXBILL posted.
You make some good IT commentsAlways cite your source for support to defend your opinionComment
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The question was not whether one can traverse the Internet without an IP address, but rather was whether a person can hide his or her own IP address. The answer to that is yes; the solution is to use a proxy service.
Network address translation (NAT), which is the means by which an internal/private IP space (typically 192.168.x.x) with any number of internal systems is mapped to a single "public" IP address that belongs to the externally facing connection that the network has to the outside world, is a specialized form of proxy service, but there are many other forms of proxy service available. All such services have the effect of making traffic appear to come from somewhere other than it actually originated. Some are transparent, so that the recipient cannot tell that the connection was proxied at all; others are known to be proxies.
To the issue of dynamic versus static IP addressing, a dynamic IP address is allocated from the provider's available IP space on the fly. Once issues, a dynamic IP address will generally stay in place for a very long time, perhaps forever if it is renewed on a regular basis (and this typically happens automatically). However, the IP address is not guaranteed to stay the same from moment to moment, which means that traffic directed to and from the endpoint requires queries against the Domain Name Service (DNS) to translate a common name Web address into the IP address with which it is associated at the moment. Networks with static IP addresses avoid this requirement by linking in purely numeric form, which offers a slight performance advantage in very specific cases.
Dynamic IP addressing and proxy services make an IP address an unreliable means of identifying where traffic originated even at the national or regional level, and they're even less reliably associated with individual systems (which is why the IRS also references the Device ID, although that might also be faked/spoofed).
All of this said, tax forms already have your contact info listed on it, so I don't see any reason to provide the IRS with an IP address or other information other than what is really associated with the computer when filing a legitimate tax return.--
James C. Samans ("Jamie")Comment
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