Guest Posted April 4, 2002 Report Share Posted April 4, 2002 how feasible is it to find out a board posters real identity? i've heard that its possible to find out which individual computer a person logs on with and its possible to trace people via their hotmail accounts to pinpoint their computer location depender on the server they use? is this true and how anonymous is the internet for the average computing non-expert? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
khunsanuk Posted April 4, 2002 Report Share Posted April 4, 2002 Hi, "i've heard that its possible to find out which individual computer a person logs on with" Only if you have a dedicated IP, which will not be the case if you use a dial-up account. "and its possible to trace people via their hotmail accounts to pinpoint their computer location depender on the server they use?' Hmmm, this sounds a bit far fetched to me. It may be possible, but not closer than say country or state level. Sanuk! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danish30 Posted April 4, 2002 Report Share Posted April 4, 2002 hansum_man, For another board member I would say it is impossible to find the real identities of other posters. For the board manager it is possible to get a bit information, like what ISP you are using and possibly what country/city you are from, since your ip address will most likely be logged at some point. If you are using dialup internet, I would say that you are pretty anonymous because you will be assigned a new ip address every time you connect and most likely your connection run through a proxy server too. If you have broadband internet and fixed ip address, it might be possible to break into your computer while you are online and gather information. This can be prevented by installing a firewall. By law in almost every country, it is required that the ISP should keep your identity secret. Only in case you break the law (e.g. attempts to hack other computers or something) the authorities can request your personal information from your ISP. These logs are usually kept for 2-4 years depending on your country of origin. All in all I will say you are safe unless reading all your posts and searching the internet for your board name would reveal enough information to establish your identity. When you send email, hotmail or others, your ip address is attached. Hope you feel more safe now Best regards, Danish30 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adikgede Posted April 4, 2002 Report Share Posted April 4, 2002 The impediments mentioned above have been overcome before and will be overcome again. However it does take some effort to get back down the wire to you. The best defense is not to make an ass of yourself in public forums like this one or usenet and become a target, not to mention you reveal far more about yourself by what you say. If you make yourself a target for some kid with some time on his hands then, where there is a will there is a way. The easiet way for some one to get at you though is still through your garbage can. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ALHOLK Posted April 4, 2002 Report Share Posted April 4, 2002 Hi! In reply to: [color:blue]how feasible is it to find out a board posters real identity?color=blue> It has been done as all long time posters on this board know. If you want to be anonymous make sure to never use an account that contains any personal data. In reply to: [color:blue]i've heard that its possible to find out which individual computer a person logs on with color=blue> In theory yes but it would require the resources of a law enforcement agency or a national intelligence service. Needless to say it requires large resources and won't be done if there isn't a suspicion of a serious crime. There are also ways to cover the tracks and render this virtually impossible but it requires rather extensive knowledge of internet internals and is not availabe to the average computer user. In reply to: [color:blue]its possible to trace people via their hotmail accounts to pinpoint their computer location depender on the server they use?color=blue> Again possible but extremely difficult and not possible for a comuter user, not even a skilled one. However hotmail account are alegedly easy to hack so never use an account containing personal data if anonymity is a concern. Having personal data and your physical location revealed would probably be worse than someone finding out which computer you are using. If this is a concern of yours, learn to use proxy chaining and use proxies located in different parts of the world. Particularly proxies in countries that don't comunicate very well will make it difficult even for the police. regards ALHOLK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ALHOLK Posted April 4, 2002 Report Share Posted April 4, 2002 Hi! In reply to: [color:blue] Only if you have a dedicated IP, which will not be the case if you use a dial-up account. color=blue> Not strictly speaking correct. In theory it might be possible to detect the MAC adress which would identify the network card used. This would ofcourse require that low level logs exist and are accessible. In real life you are right though. No normal computer user could find this informnation. regards ALHOLK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 4, 2002 Report Share Posted April 4, 2002 Many of us surf from Work, and therefore have a dedicated IP address, I once had a pop up window after looking at a site, the pop-up window was trying to sell privacy software, the window quoted my machine IP and the portal address and what operating system I was using along the the version of browser I had. There's a web site - readnotify.com - which can make hotmails trackable for anybody, by sending an invisible link at the end of an email, so you can see when/where the email was opened. I'm sure it could be possible for someone to post that link in this board and thereby seeing where the lads are around the world looking at that thread. This board logs all IP address also probably, and would log your fingerprints too if that was possible. But we're only at the tip of the icebreg where Big Brother is concerned. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stumpy Posted April 5, 2002 Report Share Posted April 5, 2002 Hi Hansum Man, To answer a portion of your question, email sent from Hotmail uses X-Origination IP which is included in the source of every message you send. This means that anyone who gets an email sent via Hotmail can determine your IP. Realistically all this tells them is who your Service provider is. If you use someone like AOL who take a tough line on revealling their customers identities then it would take a court order. If you were very paranoid you could use AOL to connect to a proxy service that purges it's logs daily and use that to surf. They can't give information that they no longer hold... People think the net is secure because most often they access it from the saftety of their own homes, in reality it isn't. For example, lots of the routers that emails pass through back up those emails and keep offline logs of them. However, I wouldn't worry too much. What in life is completely secure and private? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
khunsanuk Posted April 5, 2002 Report Share Posted April 5, 2002 Hi, "This board logs all IP address also probably" It does, but only I and my partner (i.e. Admins) have access to these. Sanuk! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 5, 2002 Report Share Posted April 5, 2002 "It does, but only I and my partner (i.e. Admins) have access to these." AHA!, now I see what's going on, were building up to the biggest Internet Blackmail scan ever, and I thought I was just being paraoid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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