![]() ![]() Swatting: Grabbing someone‘s IP address and location could enable dangerous "swatting" pranks that send armed police to victim‘s homes.ĭoxing: Gathering IP and location information could help "dox" people by revealing their personal home addresses and identities. In 2017, a man was charged with cyberstalking for using Grabify to follow his ex-girlfriend. Stalking and harassment: Abusive partners could monitor victims‘ locations and activities through tracker links. Unfortunately, Grabify links can also be easily abused for more malicious goals: However, there are still ethical concerns around informed consent and data privacy even in legitimate scenarios. I can understand the value for troubleshooting and aggregate analytics. Investigating crimes: Law enforcement may use it to gather evidence on suspects by luring them to tracker links. Research purposes: With proper ethical disclosures, academics could potentially use Grabify‘s tracking abilities for user research studies. Link tracking for marketing: Shortening links via Grabify allows brands to cleanly track clicks on marketing campaigns and measure engagement.ĭebugging connectivity issues: Network admins could create Grabify "tracer links" to help log and debug client IP addresses and connectivity problems. There are some potentially valid use cases, including: Now I don‘t want to paint Grabify as inherently evil. And they can pinpoint location even further by combining IP data with OS and browser fingerprints.įor anyone concerned about privacy, this amount of visitor logging happening in the background without consent is alarming! Potentially Legitimate Use Cases With just an IP address alone, services like Grabify try to provide GPS-level geographic tracking of individuals. Device type – desktop, phone, tablet, etc.IP location including region, city, timezone, ZIP code, latitude and longitude. ![]() Specifically, here are the visitor data points Grabify can log when someone clicks your tracker link according to their API documentation: Pretty powerful, but also pretty sketchy! What Exact Information Does Grabify Capture? So in summary, Grabify lets you easily track visitor IP addresses and other personal data to see exactly who is clicking your links, when, and where – all without their knowledge. It even generates a map showing approximate geolocations. When someone clicks your unique Grabify link, it will redirect them to the original long URL destination.īut here‘s the sneaky part – in the background Grabify will secretly log the IP address, location, operating system, browser, timezone, and other metadata about the visitor who clicked the link.įinally, Grabify provides a dashboard for the person who created the shortened link showing detailed analytics tracking the unique visitors who engaged with it. Next, you share this shortened Grabify link anywhere you want – social media posts, emails, forums, etc. Grabify then gives you a much shorter, randomized URL looking something like grabi.fy/YourUniqueLink. Here‘s a quick rundown of how Grabify allows logging visitor data when they click your unique shortened links:įirst, you go to Grabify.link and enter any long URL you want to shorten. ![]() Let‘s dive in! How Does Grabify Work To Log IPs and User Data? ![]() By the end, you‘ll understand exactly when and why using Grabify crosses ethical and legal boundaries. Today I want to provide some techie insights on how Grabify works, what data it collects, its potential legal uses, and illegal abuse cases that have gotten people in serious trouble. Grabify exists in a moral and legal gray area. One example is Grabify – a controversial website and platform that lets users track visitor IP information through unique shortened links. But some software makes it shockingly easy to grab peoples‘ IP addresses and location data without consent. Hey friend! As we spend more of our lives online, privacy tools like VPNs are becoming increasingly important. ![]()
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