[atlas] Probe IPs are public?

Dear Roman, all,

On 07-apr.-14 13:45, Roman Mamedov wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I was under impression RIPE tries to somewhat anonymize probe information
> that's displayed publicly, e.g. only showing the probe IP address information
> down to the subnet or AS level on the maps, providing the option to use
> "Obfuscated DNS entry", etc.
>
> But on the public stats pages e.g. here:
> https://stat.ripe.net/widget/atlas-probes#w.resource=DE (+ "switch to table view")
> I am able to see both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses of many or most probes without
> even having to log-in; is that intended?
>

As my colleague pointed out already, we display all network-related 
information about public probes (with the exception of personal data of 
the probe host).

Hosts can choose to not mark their probe public, however, this does not 
make the probe "private", nor does it hide all the networking-related 
information in the measurement results involving that probe.

You can find out what is the difference between the data presented about 
public and not-public probes in this RIPE Labs article:
https://labs.ripe.net/Members/becha/proposing-making-ripe-atlas-data-more-public

 > Also what is the point of choosing to use the Obfuscated DNS option
 > if the probe IPs are available in the clear anyway.

These are two different use cases, and different levels of trying to 
hide your probe data. Obfuscated DNS is used if you do not want the 
hostname for the probe to be generated by us, based on the probe-ID, and 
therefore predictable, even if you do not mark your probe as public. 
But, indeed, IP address of the probe will be visible *in the 
measurements results* even if the probe is not marked public. The only 
difference is that the probes not marked public will not be _listed_ in 
our tolls - both RIPE Atlas web interfaces, and RIPEstat.

We still encourage users to keep the defaults (public), since the goal 
of the RIPE Atlas is to share measurements results, for the benefit of 
the whole community.

We are working on producing more documentation based on the above 
article, and based on the results of the discussion with the community, 
as summarized in the massages to this & MAT-wg mailing lists:
https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/mat-wg/2014-March/000436.html
https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/ripe-atlas/2014-March/001359.html

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Regards,
Vesna