Also with right software they can switch on your mobile phone and use it as a microphone to listen in to any conversation that may be having."
Uh huh. I'd like for someone to point me to this "software" which allows a person to do this. The idea is possible, but the means to do it is impossible for anyone in the general public. There is no magic "software" program which allows someone to eavesdrop on a specific cellular conversation. I can do it(for testing purposes only - it is illegal otherwise), but there is no software program used. And for those who are wondering how I can do this and didn't already know, I work for a cell company in a central office.
A couple of years ago, I demonstrated on the board how it was possible to link a specific poster to their IP address on this board. It had nothing to do with the scrambled IP hash below the poster's name. It was a very simple method, one that many people use here everyday. My method took it a step further. By embedding a picture, or in my case, a 1 pixel transparent .gif file that was being served from my home web server, I could look at the web requests and match them to the time stamps on the thread and who posted them. I could ascertain the poster's IP address by looking at the web referral address. Just like I'm writing this reply, my url above ends with "reply.ashx." The way the board used to be, if my little .gif file was just a few posts back from the reply, it would reappear below the reply which meant that another web referral request was sent to my home web server. Once the post was submitted, I could check the web log on my home server and match up the timestamp between jwd and the log timestamp. Viola! Poster's IP address revealed(Simon has since fixed this issue). Once you have an IP address, you can determine the geographic location of where the internet request is coming from. I word it this way simply because not every IP address geographic location actually reveals where a poster is located. Some people could be using a proxy or they could be on their company's network which backhauls all traffic to one location - even possibly across the country(this is the way mine would look right now). But if you wanted to know the general area of where someone was(let's say you got their IP address and it was a comcast IP), you could easily narrow down what city they live in/nearby. If the poster revealed enough info about themselves(married, divorced, kids, type of car, etc), someone(bethel?) could take that info and start sleuthing in the general area and find who it was. Not to say it hasn't happened in the past, but it can happen elsewhere on other boards. So remember to keep your life private on the internet if it is important.
