We live in Stockholm, Sweden and have the big government telephone company TELIA as our ISP. We have had internet services through their ADSL for a little over a year now and to my surprise I have recently found out that Telia has assigned us a fixed IP address. Every time we log on to the internet we start surfing with the same IP address every time. From a security and personal integrity point of view we may as well be surfing with our Social Security Numbers if that’s the case. Of course dealing with a company the size of Telia you are immediately in David against Goliath position, and their position up to now is to just jack us around and assume no responsibility. When we had the old 56K modem and even ISDN, every time we got on the net we had a new IP address. Impossible to trace us and our surfing habits to a specific number. But not so with Telia’s ADSL.

My questions are the following:

q Is Telia’s current practice as I have described considered a breach of privacy for the private person/customer?

q Is Telia following agreed International and /or European standards regarding IP addresses?

q Am I able to lodge a formal complaint against such practices, either at the Ripe 44 meeting in Amsterdam in January or somewhere else?

I do hope that The LIR-WG will be able to provide me with some answers. Regards,

Robert Arnesen