Anyone who reads this and actually knows me also knows that I run quite a few businesses on the side. Today I got a very simple e-mail, it was also a very ignorant e-mail. I will change the name and address, just a bit, so this person can't sue me. I will break this down into two sections so it doesn't slam the front page, just click read more if you care to see my response. Below is her initial e-mail. For some reason I felt compelled to write her a very long response.

---- Beginning of Ignorance ----

From:    Beverly Tall
e-mail:   
-----------------------------------------------------

Not nice to collect folks IP Address.  Very naughty of you.  Just lost a sale.

---- End of Ignorance ----

---- Start of my response ----

Hello Beverly, 

You will probably delete this e-mail but I hope you read through it in it's entirety because, I'm sorry, I don't think you really understand what you are talking about in regards to collection of IP addresses however that is fine if you don't want to order from us however know that EVERYONE records what IP address a purchase is made from and for that matter even when you just go to their websites for trending, statistics and marketing purposes. And in fact it can actually benefit you to have a merchant document an IP address.

Our primary business is network security consulting through <Ive Removed This in the web post>, we do the perfume and geek sales thing on the side because we enjoy it so I know quite a bit about what I'm going to talk to you about, you can choose to disregard this but I hope you don't and actually end up passing it on to whoever told you someone monitoring what IP address you come from is bad.

First off, since your information was included in this email just by using this web form that you submitted I can tell you that your address is a dynamic dialup address. Otherwise it is changed every time you log in and out of the Internet, even if you were on a DSL or cable modem service unless you had a business level account and the address would probably be static. All and all this isn't very interesting information is it? To be quite honest I can only tell two things from the address you came in off of: 1) You are on a level3.net dialup pool (probably using AOL) and 2) You are coming in near their Weehawken dialup POP.

This is where I can show you how this absolutely has a benefit to you, it's actually on a fraud level. Currently about 75% of the fraud on the Internet comes out of Malaysia, in fact every month, between our several web stores, I get about 10 fraudulent orders, 9/10 are from someone in Malaysia. These orders come in with US billing names, addresses, CVV, phone info and are usually even shipping to some place in the US but the shippers always turn out to be forwarders. The only thing I have as a merchant to protect myself against fraud and the person who owns the credit card against fraud is that tiny tidbit of information saying that the IP address that person used originated from MALAYSIA! Now what do you think I do if I see an order come from an IP address in Malaysia? Usually I cancel the order immediately stating that the probability of fraud is to high.

Additionally, collecting IP addresses have actually no benefit on a spam or security level on the end-user side. Spammers or phishers don't collect IP addresses they collect e-mail addresses, having an IP address does nothing for anyone beyond statistics. In fact there is a huge database maintained by an organization called ARIN that documents who owns every IP address on the Internet and where they are assigned to.

The bottom line is that from a merchant side the probability of any sell being fraud is very high and since I can't ask you to physically show me your ID with your credit card purchase I need to collect as much as I can from your connection to provide me with a digital fingerprint of who might be on the other end. On a merchant side also the penalties from chargebacks are huge. On a 100.00 sale I already get nearly 4% of it eaten out in fees if it turns into a chargeback it ends up costing me on average $50 and each one can cause my merchant fees to go up (that 4%) which in turn causes me to raise my prices, etc.

Oh well, I doubt you have gotten to the bottom of this e-mail as it turned out being quite long but I hope you did, care to respond? I would actually love to know what you think I would possibly be doing with your address.