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by chimeracoder 4215 days ago
> Both v6 and the linux stack are privacy-friendly.

Yes and no.

The privacy extensions will create new addresses, but they will always belong to the same /64. To my knowledge, TWC will allocate a /64, but there's no guarantee that power cycling your modem will generate a new /64[0]. I believe other ISPs work the same way - they may give you a new /64, but they're not required to and don't guarantee it in the SLA. And most people won't power cycle their modems often anyway, which means they could have the same /64 for months on end.

If we're talking about online tracking, it's very easy for trackers to just throw their hands up and treat all addresses within a /64 as if they represent a single user + device. This isn't completely accurate, but it's no less accurate than IP address tracking with IPv4.

Furthermore, I am unaware of any reliable commercial VPN providers that currently provide IPv6 connections (at least over OpenVPN[1]), so if you have dual-stack connectivity, your IPv6 connection can compromise your privacy even for your IPv4 connection[2].

[0] Technically this is true for ipv4 as well, but due to the relative scarcity of addresses you're less likely to get a pseudo-static ipv4 address.

[1] OpenVPN now supports IPv6 clients, though I don't know of any actual deployments of this. PPTP is IPv4-only.

[2] I think this blog post is sadly still accurate: https://blog.dave.io/2011/06/vpn-ipv6-privacy/

1 comments

Well, I have two consumer DSL connections at home from different ISPs with completely independent infrastructure (a few billable hours pays for a year's redundancy). Both of them behave give me new, unpredictable v6 prefixes via DHCP every 2h/1d.

So obviously not all other ISPs work the way yours does.

So, you are dependent on the ISP cooperating to give you privacy? What could possibly go wrong? Downvote me all you like guys. This just proved my point. NSA will love IPv6 adoption.
Sure. We're dependent just like we were on IPv4, except that the ISPs' address pools are bigger. The same things can go wrong.
That sounds a bit disingenuous. IPv4 was always on a forced rotation because a) limited address space and b) ISPs wanted to milk customers for static IP charges. IPv6 eliminates a). That leaves b) which isn't really a factor on mobile devices. It really is a permanent cookie if the ISP decides to implement it that way. I can't say I trust AT&T and Verizon after their 'header enrichment' shenanigans.
What do those two ISPs on another continent have to do with my argument?