Kent and his merry followers seem to have made privacy their latest crusade and unfortunately they have decided to act in a completely irresponsible manner IMHO.
The forum software uses cookies to remember a users login details and can also be useful for identifying duplicate accounts. it is not used for anything sinister and cannot be used to identify someone - all it gives is an indication that a computer is being used by more than one username and has been invaluable in identifying trouble makers like Mario Kempes / Yo Yo Mama / Sexy Teen / Help Others (asking for money) and many others. I believe that this is a good thing to do as I do not believe it compromises anyones privacy and does help prevent everyone wasting their time responding to people who are just "yanking our chain".
Apart from the accounts that you have seen and know there are many more that you may not be aware of. For instance, when someone has been deleted for posting porn or obsceneties or just attacking other posters then often they will try to re-register using different names to cause more trouble. I have been able to prevent them from getting back onto the forum using this system which has been quite effective leaving everyone free to enjoy the forum oblivious.
Well, some people seem to think it is a good idea to tell people how to circumvent these checks which will make it that much harder to check for duplicates. This is one reason why I will need to be a bit more strict and less tolerant from now on.
So, don't be surprised if trouble makers start to pop up and don't come complaining to me if you find you have wasted a lot of time responding to them - I suggest instead you "thank" the people responsible.
(this desn't mean I won't continue to do my best to keep this a nice place to post)