As of 29th January, the default way connections are made to unregistered IRC networks will be changing.

Kiwi IRC has always been heavily privacy focused from day one:

We do not and have never divulged users information when asked

We do not store users information for longer than needed

We do not pass users connection information to IRC networks unless specifically requested to do so

Unfortunately, that last point has caused issues over the years since IRC still uses hostnames as its primary way to do many things such as user bans (this does hold IRC back in many different areas.. but that’s another story). When connecting to an IRC network that is unknown to kiwiirc.com we don’t send any user identifiable information to the network leading some people to believe that this is a loophole of some sort or that Kiwi IRC is an anonymous bouncer.

We didn’t know if the network wanted user IPs shown publicly or not - so we err’d on the side of caution and did not show them. This was fine when Kiwi IRC first started as it was mainly used by highly privacy focused groups but now we have a much greater variation of network types using Kiwi IRC.

From the 29th January, any unknown IRC networks will have the users IPv4 address in hex form as the ident. This will be more inline with other web based IRC clients making ident based bans compatible between them. If any privacy focused networks do not wish for this information to be shown, you can register your IRC network at https://kiwiirc.com/mynetworks and select how you wish idents to be displayed.

Mailinglist discussion: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/kiwiirc/QFfFtRZtCXw