voltron fandom psa

lionbots:

in regards to the gathering of ip addresses

i know this scares a lot of you. it’s a scary concept to think that random people you don’t know are gathering ip addresses of shippers for who knows what purpose. especially if these are the same antis involved in sending gore/child porn/death threats to other shippers. i’ve seen a lot of people wanting to delete, because they now feel completely unsafe logging into tumblr. but i’m here to ease that fear a bit.

for one, there’s not much the average person can do with an ip address. ip addresses are public to begin with. sites log them wherever you go. since they’re so public there’s been a lot of measures put into place to assure that heavy damage cannot be done with them. as long as you exercise the normal amount of internet safety (make sure your firewall is up, dont click on strange links or open messages/emails from people you don’t know) you should be okay. unless they have certain programs and a certain set/degree of skills, they can’t DoS your computer or keylog you or hack your tumblr or anything like that. that is very very very highly unlikely, okay? just practice internet safety and you’ll be okay.

even something like tracking your ip to see where else you go on the internet…they probably can’t do it. the most they’ll be able to do is check when a certain ip address visits their personal site (in this case, their blog). they won’t be able to track you beyond that.

and, last but not least, the ip addresses that these people are obtaining are most likely dynamic ip addresses, not any static device addresses. you are assigned a new dynamic ip address every time you disconnect and reconnect to the internet. so, if you feel unsafe, or think your dynamic ip has been taken by someone, disconnect from the internet, restart your computer, turn your modem or router off and then on again. be as thorough as you need. then reconnect.

i totally understand if, even after seeing this, you would still feel safer deleting. the final decision is up to you and i’m here for support regardless. but i hope this post at least helped ease your worry a bit.

stay safe everyone! ❤