that was actually one of the better metaphor's I've heard Dok! The subject of whether or not someone having your IP addy puts one in danger is an intensely arguable one. Put yourself in a corporate network position where anyone can obtain your IP address ranges with simple tools.

If you run a webserver, that IP address too can be obtained via simple tools like nslookup or dig. even ping (ping www.yahoo.com, notice how it resolves to an IP) will give you the IP of a dns name. The fact is, yes proxy's do help to hide IP addy's... but there are also people out there randomly scanning that may or not grab the IP you have regardless. And yes there are many many tools out there to both hide, or obtain an IP addy.

The best trick like Dok up there siad, keep yourself protected. This is what we do in corporate environments, it's what most of us here at AO do at home. Granted we go through more trouble to lock down a corporate environment!! Browse the forums for old threads on personal firewalls and of course antivirus... with those two simple tools you'll make yourself a hard enough target to avoid the S'kiddies and naturally any "real" blackhat out there with malicious intent is after larger fish (like our corporate networks... oh dag....).

Definately search the forums for previous threads on all these subjects, I'm pretty sure you'll find what you need!! and if not you can always visit the AO chat (we get a bit wild but really someone should help you there.....)