They only expose approximate, not precise, locations, so they shouldn’t be a risk like GPS that exposes precise locations?
Be aware, this is VASTLY dependent on your ISP. Smaller ISP’s especially DSL based ones in rural areas are notorious for giving almost exact address when you reverse look up it.
My old ISP used to do that. like I had to try super hard to mask my IP if I went somewhere like IRC or Chatango that disclosed the full address to people joining, because if someone wanted to they could have looked up my address down to the house just by following the remote lookup because it would show my address instead of their nearest hub.
Thankfully now it shows me somewhere in NY which I feel a lot more comfortable with, but still don’t take for granted that it’s only an approximate.
As for actual privacy risks? It really depends on how private you want to get. A reverse lookup will give you your provider, and sometimes as I said above more. And if you have any forwarding enabled they can also try to get through your services using any exploits or misconfigurations you may have.
Additionally, some routers will disclose a worryingly large amount of data if misconfigured, for example ATT modem/routers will give customer information, connected devices(including names) and VOIP phone configurations if you can get the router to think you are a local device or manage to misconfigure the management port to allow external connections. This is all without the requirement of a password/no auth
Be aware, this is VASTLY dependent on your ISP. Smaller ISP’s especially DSL based ones in rural areas are notorious for giving almost exact address when you reverse look up it.
My old ISP used to do that. like I had to try super hard to mask my IP if I went somewhere like IRC or Chatango that disclosed the full address to people joining, because if someone wanted to they could have looked up my address down to the house just by following the remote lookup because it would show my address instead of their nearest hub.
Thankfully now it shows me somewhere in NY which I feel a lot more comfortable with, but still don’t take for granted that it’s only an approximate.
As for actual privacy risks? It really depends on how private you want to get. A reverse lookup will give you your provider, and sometimes as I said above more. And if you have any forwarding enabled they can also try to get through your services using any exploits or misconfigurations you may have.
Additionally, some routers will disclose a worryingly large amount of data if misconfigured, for example ATT modem/routers will give customer information, connected devices(including names) and VOIP phone configurations if you can get the router to think you are a local device or manage to misconfigure the management port to allow external connections. This is all without the requirement of a password/no auth