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When my site are in development I have always gotten the IP address from AWS, then accessed them from my browser. But here's an article I would read if there is a secret exposure...<br />
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<a href="https://www.imore.com/how-edit-your-macs-hosts-file-and-why-you-would-want" rel="ugc">https://www.imore.com/how-edit-your-macs-hosts-file-and-why-you-would-want</a><br />
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I do not take lightly to changing my Hosts file because I do not want to put myself into an unstable condition, if I missed something in the directions.<br />
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Is there risk to using an IP address to directly access my PC? I assume the biggest benefit is that the site can be kept private from public view, but is there any way in the world that someone cold guess that address?<br />
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Are the scrapers out there pinging billions of IP addresses?<br />
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As far as keeping it private, it is mainly that I can use my real domain name and keep that private? That's nt important to me since I can buy the SSL cert and do that before launch. AT the moment, I just need to look at the sire and test it, so by adding my IP into the browser, does that expose my IP to scrapers? <br />
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Thanks.
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When my site are in development I have always gotten the IP address from AWS, then accessed them from my browser. But here's an article I would read if there is a secret exposure...

https://www.imore.com/how-edit-your-macs-hosts-file-and-why-you-would-want

I do not take lightly to changing my Hosts file because I do not want to put myself into an unstable condition, if I missed something in the directions.

Is there risk to using an IP address to directly access my PC? I assume the biggest benefit is that the site can be kept private from public view, but is there any way in the world that someone cold guess that address?

Are the scrapers out there pinging billions of IP addresses?

As far as keeping it private, it is mainly that I can use my real domain name and keep that private? That's nt important to me since I can buy the SSL cert and do that before launch. AT the moment, I just need to look at the sire and test it, so by adding my IP into the browser, does that expose my IP to scrapers? 

Thanks.

Risk to accessing AWS site via IP address

Public DNS

HTTPS is a protocol for secure communication over a computer network which is widely used on the Internet. HTTPS consists of communication over Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) within a connection encrypted by Transport Layer Security (TLS) or its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). The main motivation for HTTPS is authentication of the visited website and to protect the privacy and integrity of the exchanged data. HTTPS is widely used for protecting page authenticity on all types of websites, securing accounts and keeping user communications, identity and web browsing private.

SSL / HTTPS

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical, globally distributed system responsible for associating the name of a computer, service or other resource into an IP address for connecting to the Internet or a private network. Most prominently, it translates domain names to the numerical IP addresses needed for the purpose of computer services and devices worldwide.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), is a collection of remote computing services, also called web services, that make up a cloud-computing platform  operated from 11 geographical regions across the world. The most central and well-known of these services include Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, also known as "EC2", and Amazon Simple Storage Service, also known as "S3". Other services include Elastic MapReduce (EMR), Route 53 (a DNS web service),  provides a highly available and scalable Domain Name System (DNS) web service, Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), storage, database, deployment and application services.

Security is the protection of information systems from theft or damage to the hardware, the software, and the information on them, as well as from disruption or misdirection of the services they provide. The main goal of security is protecting assets, and an asset is anything of value and worthy of protection.  Information Security is a discipline of protecting information assets from threats through safeguards to achieve the objectives of confidentiality, integrity, and availability or CIA for short. On the other hand, disclosure, alteration, and disruption (DAD) compromise the security objectives.