I post from home and work, and have two different service providers. Thus, two different IPs. Also, every few months or so, the IP changes. If you use a dynamic IP, it could be different everytime. There are several service providers that use batches, so if a forum were to ban a specific IP, for instance, it could affect a whole range of members who post from that particular service provider.
Incidentally, the number/letter combo at the bottom of your posts is NOT an IP, it's an encryption.
An IP address looks like this: 45.345.345.11
If you have a real IP address and want to look someone up, depending on their security, you could conceivably find a person. However, most Internet Providers are smarter than that, and provide a measure of security along with the service. For instance, a person with MY specific IP address could determine that my provider is in Oregon, who my internet service provider is, that I have a "highly anonymous" connection, that I do not use a proxy server, and a map stamp will put you down about 3-4 miles from home. The packet that comes through with my husband's work email says he's in Colorado. (I'm pretty sure that's not true, cause there's a guy in the other room that looks just like my husband...) So it's clearly not foolproof.
If you look through the archives here, there was a very LARGE, LONG witchhunt that went on about 3 years ago, where it was discovered that a number of well-known posters had the same encrypted IP "identifier" at the bottom of their posts. It turns out that they were not all "THE SAME PERSON", which I'm certain the webmaster/site owner knew, but was not generally understood by parts of the membership. Some of these members use AOL as their internet provider.
From AOL:
AOL Members' requests for internet objects are usually handled by the AOL Proxy system. When a member requests multiple documents for multiple URLs, each request may come from a different proxy server. Since one proxy server can have multiple members going to one site, webmasters should not make assumptions about the relationship between members and proxy servers when designing their web site.
This means that if you use AOL and are from about the same area, it's highly possible that you will have the same IP identifier.
Thus, those little numbers at the bottom of the posts are NOT a reliable way of identifying imposters.
