I thought I did? The condescending attitude is unnecessary. Happy to clarify my point if my initial comment was confusing:
Websites such as http://panopticlick.eff.org/ showcase how fingerprinting works. They tell you how many bits of information they can extract from various datapoints they get out of you when visiting their site, such as User-Agent.
Panopticlick does not use your IP address as a datapoint, but actual trackers most likely do. If not your IP directly, then a prefix thereof (such as your /24), to account for ISPs w/ dynamic IP allocation.
If you have a static IP, there's a lot of bits of entropy in it, i.e. it's great for fingerprinting. It's basically sufficient, by itself, to uniquely identify your home. The handful of devices in your home can then likely be distinguished by the User-Agent.
If you're part of your ISP's small dynamic IP pool (e.g. a /24), there's probably still a lot of entropy in there. How many people in your neighborhood are also on Linux and have the same set of fonts installed? Probably just you.
Your VPN's dynamic IP subnets, OTOH, can be a lot larger, and the members of the pool are not geographically close to one another, so there's probably a lot less fingerprinting entropy in your IP in that case.
I think the negative reaction to your earlier comment comes from your mis-use of the term entropy. A static ip, for purposes of tracking you as an individual, has very, very little entropy (in fact, none) . High entropy would be a dynamic IP that is refreshed from a large pool very often.
Additionally, very few ISPs assign static IPs anymore, not unless you pay 5x the price for a business account. Trackers, by and large, don't really pay much attention to IP, since much more reliable metrics have been implemented. Sure, it probably is used to a small extent, but there are much more effective steps that can be taken.
Websites such as http://panopticlick.eff.org/ showcase how fingerprinting works. They tell you how many bits of information they can extract from various datapoints they get out of you when visiting their site, such as User-Agent.
Panopticlick does not use your IP address as a datapoint, but actual trackers most likely do. If not your IP directly, then a prefix thereof (such as your /24), to account for ISPs w/ dynamic IP allocation.
If you have a static IP, there's a lot of bits of entropy in it, i.e. it's great for fingerprinting. It's basically sufficient, by itself, to uniquely identify your home. The handful of devices in your home can then likely be distinguished by the User-Agent.
If you're part of your ISP's small dynamic IP pool (e.g. a /24), there's probably still a lot of entropy in there. How many people in your neighborhood are also on Linux and have the same set of fonts installed? Probably just you.
Your VPN's dynamic IP subnets, OTOH, can be a lot larger, and the members of the pool are not geographically close to one another, so there's probably a lot less fingerprinting entropy in your IP in that case.