You'll have to be a little bit more descriptive...
Ok, here's my question rephrased...
I have several web sites. Let's say, for example, I want to create a page that is not linked to any other page in the site. The page would only be accessable to people who I wanted to share the page with. Now, let's say that I wanted them to see the page, but I really didn't want them to see the rest of the site or easily have other information about me. If I gave them the URL www.mywebsite.com/privatephotos.htm, then almost anyone with any common sence could type in www.mywebsite.com and get to my main page and, therefore, find out more about me.
I have found sites that allow me to translate the URL into Binary or Hex codes. However, these codes are unmanageable for most people to copy and paste. I know that there is a way to translate http://www.mywebsite.com into a numbered URL address such as 204.152.211...I just don't know how.
I fully realize that this wouldn't prevent anyone from eventually finding my main index page. That's fine. I just want to try and limit that access to the general public.
Well, the thing is, I think, that it's trivial for anyone to trace the IP address of your private content back to your "index" site by a reverse lookup. If you don't want someone to associate certain private content with your webserver, don't put it on your webserver. Fundamentally, I don't think there's really any way around that. Get a free webhosting account somewhere, using an email address that no one would recognize.
If you're assuming that the clientele for your private content are half-braindead, then you can do something mildly tricky like registering a different domain name. It's not too difficult to serve content to two domains from one webserver, and some hosting services make it clicky-easy. Then at least someone would have to lookup the IP address for your alternate site, then lookup what other sites are hosted at that IP. That at least requires a little more effort than a straight IP-to-domain lookup.
I can try to be more specific if can give some details about your hosting setup.
I'm not sure that he will understand all of that. He seems unsure of what an IP address is in relation to a domain name.
youcanhaveyourpc: You can register another domain and use that. For example, you have www.mypersonalpage.com registered right now. Now, you can have a folder on that page called www.mypersonalpage.com/privatestuff/. You could register another domain to point to that folder. So you could send www.myprivatecontent.com and it would go to that folder (the location would never appear as www.mypersonalpage.com/privatestuff/ to the web browser on the user end of things). This would be transparent to whomever you were providing the private URL to.
Now, they could translate www.myprivatecontent.com into the IP address of the server that is hosting your files (this is the xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx number that you were referring to). But there are a couple of caveats here. If you have your own dedicated server that is just for your site, then it could be possible for someone to lookup all domains associated with that IP, in which case they would get the www.mypersonalpage.com URL as well. But this is not as easy as just deleting the 'privatestuff/' from the www.mypersonapage.com/privatestuff/ URL and hitting enter. It would be a barrier to most casual users.
The BIG bonus here is that if you are on a shared server. (a webserver that serves multiple people's sites simultaneously from the same physical machine, therefore the same xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx number) Since the webserver is obviously going to have a large number of domains associated with it, it will be pretty hard for even someone who goes to the trouble to even figure out which of the domains could be your domain. From their perspective www.myprivatecontent.com could be the only domain that you have hosted there, they have no way of knowing. If even 5 other sites are hosted there with 1 domain each, that is 6 domains (5 other sites + your www.mypersonalpage.com site) other than the private one (www.myprivatecontent.com) that are associated with that webserver. They would have a hard time figuring out which domain is one that you own.
If you are really paranoid about this as well, you might want to pay extra for a company to 'escrow' your WHOIS information. (ProTip: The WHOIS information is a record of who has registered the domain. If someone performs a WHOIS on www.myprivatecontent.com they will get your name, address, etc that you have provided to the company your registered the domain through) The 'escrow' WHOIS company puts their contact information on your WHOIS record. If someone really wants to contact you, then they will send the 'escrow' company an email/phone call/whatever, and the message will then be forwarded to you. (Note: For whatever reason, you can't do this on .us domain names for some strange reason. They changed the rules a year ago so that you have to have your real contact info on there.)
Comments
Originally posted by pyr3
You'll have to be a little bit more descriptive...
Ok, here's my question rephrased...
I have several web sites. Let's say, for example, I want to create a page that is not linked to any other page in the site. The page would only be accessable to people who I wanted to share the page with. Now, let's say that I wanted them to see the page, but I really didn't want them to see the rest of the site or easily have other information about me. If I gave them the URL www.mywebsite.com/privatephotos.htm, then almost anyone with any common sence could type in www.mywebsite.com and get to my main page and, therefore, find out more about me.
I have found sites that allow me to translate the URL into Binary or Hex codes. However, these codes are unmanageable for most people to copy and paste. I know that there is a way to translate http://www.mywebsite.com into a numbered URL address such as 204.152.211...I just don't know how.
I fully realize that this wouldn't prevent anyone from eventually finding my main index page. That's fine. I just want to try and limit that access to the general public.
Thanks...and sorry for the long-winded question.
If you're assuming that the clientele for your private content are half-braindead, then you can do something mildly tricky like registering a different domain name. It's not too difficult to serve content to two domains from one webserver, and some hosting services make it clicky-easy. Then at least someone would have to lookup the IP address for your alternate site, then lookup what other sites are hosted at that IP. That at least requires a little more effort than a straight IP-to-domain lookup.
I can try to be more specific if can give some details about your hosting setup.
youcanhaveyourpc: You can register another domain and use that. For example, you have www.mypersonalpage.com registered right now. Now, you can have a folder on that page called www.mypersonalpage.com/privatestuff/. You could register another domain to point to that folder. So you could send www.myprivatecontent.com and it would go to that folder (the location would never appear as www.mypersonalpage.com/privatestuff/ to the web browser on the user end of things). This would be transparent to whomever you were providing the private URL to.
Now, they could translate www.myprivatecontent.com into the IP address of the server that is hosting your files (this is the xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx number that you were referring to). But there are a couple of caveats here. If you have your own dedicated server that is just for your site, then it could be possible for someone to lookup all domains associated with that IP, in which case they would get the www.mypersonalpage.com URL as well. But this is not as easy as just deleting the 'privatestuff/' from the www.mypersonapage.com/privatestuff/ URL and hitting enter. It would be a barrier to most casual users.
The BIG bonus here is that if you are on a shared server. (a webserver that serves multiple people's sites simultaneously from the same physical machine, therefore the same xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx number) Since the webserver is obviously going to have a large number of domains associated with it, it will be pretty hard for even someone who goes to the trouble to even figure out which of the domains could be your domain. From their perspective www.myprivatecontent.com could be the only domain that you have hosted there, they have no way of knowing. If even 5 other sites are hosted there with 1 domain each, that is 6 domains (5 other sites + your www.mypersonalpage.com site) other than the private one (www.myprivatecontent.com) that are associated with that webserver. They would have a hard time figuring out which domain is one that you own.
If you are really paranoid about this as well, you might want to pay extra for a company to 'escrow' your WHOIS information. (ProTip: The WHOIS information is a record of who has registered the domain. If someone performs a WHOIS on www.myprivatecontent.com they will get your name, address, etc that you have provided to the company your registered the domain through) The 'escrow' WHOIS company puts their contact information on your WHOIS record. If someone really wants to contact you, then they will send the 'escrow' company an email/phone call/whatever, and the message will then be forwarded to you. (Note: For whatever reason, you can't do this on .us domain names for some strange reason. They changed the rules a year ago so that you have to have your real contact info on there.)
Cheers!
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Ooh! This is my 1337 post! I am finally 1337!
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