Just been visited by a mysterious spy?

Update: turns out this is just an IP from the local network or something. Cf RFC 1918. Quoted for posterity, lol.

I don’t really often check my stats, but after laying that big gigabit ethernet cable through the house one of the page where I happily checked out my brand new speed was my Piwik page. I noticed PatheticCockroach.com had been visited pretty much more than usual yesterday, and that some people apparently from France (in case you don’t know, Piwik deduces the location from the user’s locale, not from the IP) arrived there after querying specifically for “patheticcockroach”. Out of curiosity I checked their IP (http://cqcounter.com/whois/, http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm?GetLocation, http://www.geolocalise-ip.com/), and woah, that’s a secret IP:

NetRange: 10.0.0.0 – 10.255.255.255
CIDR: 10.0.0.0/8
OriginAS:
NetName: PRIVATE-ADDRESS-ABLK-RFC1918-IANA-RESERVED
NetHandle: NET-10-0-0-0-1
Parent:
NetType: IANA Special Use
NameServer: BLACKHOLE-1.IANA.ORG
NameServer: BLACKHOLE-2.IANA.ORG
Comment: This block is used as private address space.
Comment: Addresses from this block can be used by
Comment: anyone without any need to coordinate with
Comment: IANA or an Internet registry. Addresses from
Comment: this block are used in multiple, separately
Comment: operated networks.
Comment: This block was assigned by the IETF in the
Comment: Best Current Practice document, RFC 1918
Comment: which can be found at:
Comment: http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1918.txt
RegDate:
Updated: 2010-03-15
Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-10-0-0-0-1

OrgName: Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
OrgId: IANA
Address: 4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330
City: Marina del Rey
StateProv: CA
PostalCode: 90292-6695
Country: US
RegDate:
Updated: 2004-02-24
Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/org/IANA

OrgAbuseHandle: IANA-IP-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number
OrgAbusePhone: +1-310-301-5820
OrgAbuseEmail: abuse@iana.org
OrgAbuseRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/IANA-IP-ARIN

OrgTechHandle: IANA-IP-ARIN
OrgTechName: Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number
OrgTechPhone: +1-310-301-5820
OrgTechEmail: abuse@iana.org
OrgTechRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/IANA-IP-ARIN

From their site‘s description (The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is responsible for the global coordination of the DNS Root, IP addressing, and other Internet protocol resources.), I hope they’re not here because my DNS went crazy or something. But anway, why do they use a French Windows XP with a 1024*768 resolution?

Oh, well…..