Technical Curiosity

JBean

Hi everyone... In my last post I admitted that I was semi computer-illiterate (!) So my question is, given the stuff that's just gone on with YoYo/SexyTeen's threads... how does Simon (or anyone) figure out that these are the same people? He mentioned that the post was from the same computer! He can do this even if the e-mail address is blocked? How? (Does he actually know who I am???) : )

gem

Every machine has an Internet Protocol (IP) address to identify itself on the Internet, eg 192.169.1.3.

Simon

I can see where the access to the forum is coming from which is how I am able to tell. No one else has access to this information.

Also, I have access to the email address but this does not tell me anything and is never divulged to any third parties.

The reason for the security is to protect the forum and people on it.

nytelecom2

unless your smart and go through a
bogus proxy server.......check out my
home page for more info

Simon

that won't help you nytelecom2 - with my powers I can tell that you also post as

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.

nytelecom1

(that wasn't very impressive though really was it, LOL)

Valis

The easiest way for all of us to be able to see IPs and multiple personas would be to include the IP address with each post and or/post that IP address when one is chatting. This obviously has some implications, like MAYBE allowing someone who was lurking about to track someone down, but not very likely, as IP addresses change with each new logon. That is to say that if someone were to use another identity, they would have to login and logout/release thier IP address every time they wanted to use another persona and not get caught.

Sincerely,

District Overbeer

gem

This is interesting ...
http://www.networldmap.com/

(It's nothing special - it's just based on people's responses.)

JBean

Thanks Simon (and everyone else too!)... that explains a lot! : ) And thank you also for having much respect for our privacy... for some of us it's been a life saver. Jbean

Mindchild

Just for everyone's information about people playing little games and using IP masking and proxy servers there is still a way to determine who authors posts. In the academic world they use software all the time to determine if students are cheating on writing essays and term papers. The software looks for similarites in grammatical style, syntax, word useage and so forth and paints a clear profile of what a persons writing style is. Once you have this down, then you can compare any new documents and look for matches. The professors I have talked with tell me that it is very good at catching cheaters.

Hmmm, it might be interesting to run the Watchtower and other dub publications through a software program like this too to see how many people are actually writing the drivel that comes out of there. My guess it is an angry old man, who hasn't had sex in 50 years and is related to Jim Jones. lol

Skipper

Moxy

some forums post IPs but this is not very common and would not be appropriate for a forum like this. what h2o used to do was post a string containing an encrypted IP. this allowed everyone to compare strings to see publicly that a person was posting under more than one name from the same location (or ISP) but made it impossible to determine the IP itself, something of a compromise.

mox

Technical Curiosity

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