On another mesage board, this user is using some IP logging technique to determine the identities of anonymous forum users. he claims to be capturing them due to a glitch in the forum software that accidentally displays the IP address in the source code? Is this possible or he really just getting user to click on a link that then in turn caprtures the Ip of those who are foolish enough to click the link?

My other question is- once the IP address is found, is there any way to get the home address or account name for that IP address without court order, etc?

Any help = appreciated

2/28/2007 10:32:22 AM

2/28/2007 10:39:03 AM

generally no

2/28/2007 10:41:51 AM

Quote :

"My other question is- once the IP address is found, is there any way to get the home address or account name for that IP address without court order"

what did you do, threaten his children or something?

2/28/2007 10:47:20 AM

which message board? we can get a bunch of twwers in there and flame him to bits

2/28/2007 10:47:23 AM

i actually think its a pretty good idea.

i frequenct another forum that does this automatically....it doesn't display other people's IP addresses, but you can click on a link by every post that will display other users who post from the same IP address. its easy to weed out the aliases.

one downside though is that when people use a general IP service (like AOL) it groups all the users under the same address.

[Edited on February 28, 2007 at 10:51 AM. Reason : d]

2/28/2007 10:50:42 AM

Its a community site and people were discussing politics. Well one of the political people that hold an office is doing something?? to figure out who the forum posters are. some of the anonymous ones want to remain anonymous because they are related to other political members in that area, etc. Its really stupid political drama, but this guy is a major A-hole and is now using his info to semi-threaten the posters on the forum.

The forum site does not display the IPs but this guy claims a "glitch" in the software happens every now and then that accidentally shows the IP. He claims he has written software to track waht is said and also track when this glitch happens.

[Edited on February 28, 2007 at 10:59 AM. Reason : asdf]

2/28/2007 10:58:14 AM

eh? if he's the forum admin he can add code in that shows the ip the logged in user is coming from. That's not hard at all. But that's pretty easy to get around if someone really wanted to.

2/28/2007 11:15:11 AM

not the forum admin. He has beef with the admins tho. He thinks they created the site to keep him down. haha. Thats part of the reason he is doing waht he is doing. From what Ive seen, it looks like he hired someone to investigate and get the info for him. So maybe he hired some IT person.

2/28/2007 11:19:46 AM

I could see him scanning the page for a number similar to an IP and then connecting it with the username. But other than that he has no chance of finding this out. I'll place his "full of shit" meter at about 99% full on this one.

2/28/2007 11:24:09 AM

You should unleash the dogs of TWW on him, we could probably trash that forum something fierce.

[Edited on February 28, 2007 at 11:49 AM. Reason : maybe I should've said 'him', was more what I meant anyway]

2/28/2007 11:34:31 AM

Thats kinda what i was guessing. Hes jsut trying to intimidate people into not running him down on the internet becuase he wants to get re-elected.

^the forum is a good place- HE wants to run it down. Now unleashing some hackers on his POS file storage site (has parent directory with archived forum posts on there) might be nice. But.. I am lucky enough to be a third party in this mess so I would like to remain as such.

[Edited on February 28, 2007 at 11:37 AM. Reason : forum killing]

[Edited on February 28, 2007 at 11:37 AM. Reason : cant type]

2/28/2007 11:34:57 AM

just make a post in chit chat how so-n-so said this. You have a lot of very bored, very resourceful people there. If you want dirt... go to the ground in chit chat.

2/28/2007 12:00:16 PM

Quote :

"once the IP address is found, is there any way to get the home address or account name for that IP address without court order, etc?"

No. The only way to turn an IP address into a name is through legal action.
This URL will explain how the RIAA does this:
http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2007/01/how-riaa-litigation-process-works.html


Most forum software I know of logs IP addresses. But even if he has your IP address, there isn't much he can do.

2/28/2007 1:09:49 PM

i thought you could use [some] IP addresses to estimate physical location...is that not possible? there were a couple programs i saw that did Gmaps powered visual tracerouting...

2/28/2007 1:59:23 PM

Shield yourself: http://www.cotse.net/

Membership is cheap, anonymity is priceless.

2/28/2007 2:08:06 PM

^^ You can estimate location down to a city, maybe a zip code, but that's it. There are a few visual traceroute tools on the internet. Try one out with your IP address to see what you get.

2/28/2007 2:13:24 PM

You can get whois info from the IP and then get the address of the company that owns the block.

for example: http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ipall.ch?ip=209.170.159.18
is for the ip for tww. You cant really see where its point to in the map (looks like the upper right).

You can pop your own IP address into dnsstuff's ip whois or ip info tool and it will show you pretty much everything anyone could learn from just your ip.

2/28/2007 2:15:31 PM

good info. thanks.

2/28/2007 2:20:37 PM

2/28/2007 2:41:10 PM

can you game through a proxy?

2/28/2007 3:05:22 PM

Yes, but you wouldn't want to play a twitch game through a proxy. Especially if you're using an SSH tunnel (which you should be) to communicate with the proxy. Lag time is a good bit increased. If you find yourself a dedicated proxy then you should be ok though.

2/28/2007 3:33:04 PM

INTERESTING DEVELOPMENT in this- The person (public official) trying to hack the site, detect forum identities, etc "supposedly" got a nice little chat from a town attorney that told him he was breaking the law and could be prosecuted/sued or whatever and he seems to have gotten the point. Now our nice little forum can resume scrutinizing his politics without being harrassed or intimidated.

3/6/2007 9:33:16 AM

Oh yeah. I had to follow up and let TWW know this because I hate when people post crazy questions/ stories and like a month later you are wondering "what happened with that crazy mess" and they never get back on TWW to tell the rest of the story.

3/6/2007 9:34:55 AM

Thanks for the followup.

3/6/2007 10:11:09 AM