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A little game

faustian bargain

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it has nothing to do with things people have said in their posts, because i've never mentioned my place of business. also i've never bought anything from verogroup via ebay or elsewhere.

also the information he is using came sometime during the past few weeks.

it did not come from profile email addresses.

i am confident it came from the IP addresses of the posting computers.

if i were motivated enough i could figure out how to find that information. it's not glaringly obvious to me so i'm not going to spend time to figure it out. some forum boards actually include the user's subnet on their posts, so the information is there, you just have to dig some to get it.

(there are sites dedicated to hacking the ikonboard system, btw.)

-andrew
 

vero_group

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I am not a stalker or a hacker. I am no longer an active ebay seller. I do not have a photographic memory, nor the time or inclination to remember where everyone works or goes to school.

Here's a hint:

Look into my eyes.
 

faustian bargain

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oh.

your server logs all requests to view your avatar.

duh.

good one.
 

VMan

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I am not a stalker or a hacker. I am no longer an active ebay seller. I do not have a photographic memory, nor the time or inclination to remember where everyone works or goes to school.

Here's a hint:

Look into my eyes.
So no 1,000 points for me?


Awesome game, though. I had never heard of the technology you mentioned. Very cool.
 

faustian bargain

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very cool or slightly scary - just remember, every time you view anything on the web your IP can be sniffed. so it behooves your network administrator to keep sensitive information out of the network's profile.
 

vero_group

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Faustian wins again. 1,000 points goes into Faustian's account. Yep, since my avatar is hosted on my own server, my server logs everyone's IP addresses. Then, WebTrends simply looks up the description associated with that IP address and, voila., your company's or university's name shows up in my daily WebTrends report. I only posted a partial list too. Besides universities, we also have lots of law firm networks hitting this site. You guys get back to work -- you've got to meet your billing quota this month. Â
tounge.gif
 

faustian bargain

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i'm sure they are billing this to 'research'.
cheesy.gif
 

BjornH

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Do you value your privacy ? Try this on your NT or XP system: 1) Do a search for a file named 'hosts' on your computer. It should be in a subdirectory of the windows/winnt folder. On NT and XP systems it's in windowssystem32driversetc The windows folder can sometimes be called winnt instead. If this file has not been used before it's name is hosts.txt and it's inactive. 2) Open it in notepad and add the following line to the end of it: 127.0.0.1 www.veroinc.com 3) Save the file using the name hosts in the original directory. Be sure to use Save-As and select 'All files' from the drop-down menu below the filename instead of "Text documents *.txt" or else it will be saved with a .txt ending. 4) Open a command window (Start->Run->cmd) and type: ipconfig /flushdns This should block your computer from fetching the avatar. Vero could easly counter this, but to block this completely you would have to get your hands a lot more dirty. If your computer is acting funny after this it means you did something wrong. Just delete the hosts file and repeat step 4 or do a reboot and it should sort it self out. B
 

faustian bargain

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doesn't that blocking strategy only work for the hosts you specify in the 'hosts' file? in other words it only works for known 'predators', to coin a phrase.

to more broadly protect your IP info from unknown 'predators' i guess you need some different kind of strategy.
 

FIHTies

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(vero_group @ 27 Sep. 2004, 09:54) OK, well, let's make that Part II of the game. Like on "Who's Line Is It Anyway?", 1,000 points will go to the person who can guess correctly: How do I -- a lowly user, not an administrator of the forum --know where everyone works or goes to school?
You're just a crazy, psycho, unstable internet stalker. Everytime someone has mentioned where they work/attend school in a post, your crazy killer brain makes a mental note of it, and it is never forgotten. Do I get the 1,000 points? Â
thumbs-up.gif

Eric: The good news is that you win the 1000 points. The bad news is that you should sleep with one eye open tonight.
devil.gif
JJF
 

VMan

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(VersaceMan @ 27 Sep. 2004, 11:58)
Originally Posted by vero_group,27 Sep. 2004, 09:54
OK, well, let's make that Part II of the game. Like on "Who's Line Is It Anyway?", 1,000 points will go to the person who can guess correctly: How do I -- a lowly user, not an administrator of the forum --know where everyone works or goes to school?
You're just a crazy, psycho, unstable internet stalker. Everytime someone has mentioned where they work/attend school in a post, your crazy killer brain makes a mental note of it, and it is never forgotten. Do I get the 1,000 points? Â
thumbs-up.gif

Eric: The good news is that you win the 1000 points. The bad news is that you should sleep with one eye open tonight.
devil.gif
JJF
Yeah, I'm going to have nightmares about those eyes from his avitar all night long. Those EYES.
 

Huntsman

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Interesting, thanks. I see I am going to have to be more careful.
wink.gif
Or as one CEO and pundit put it, "You already have zero privacy, get over it." What a deplorable attitude... Regards, Huntsman
 

BjornH

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doesn't that blocking strategy only work for the hosts you specify in the 'hosts' file? in other words it only works for known 'predators', to coin a phrase. to more broadly protect your IP info from unknown 'predators' i guess you need some different kind of strategy.
Oh yes, it's a very specific change and therefore can be easly tackled. This is done in the network layer but the correct way to do this is to instruct the browser not to fetch content outside the original domain. Explorer, or other browsers I know of, will not let you do this and this would break many sites for the user. A realistic way of doing this would be for J to disallow external avatars and only allow local avatars, hosted by styleforum. He could then allow us to upload our custom avatars but they could not be used to track us (except by J, of course&#33
wink.gif
. I don't know if Iconboard allows for this but I put this to J for consideration. B
 

tjmaglio

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(faustian bargain @ 28 Sep. 2004, 12:20) doesn't that blocking strategy only work for the hosts you specify in the 'hosts' file? in other words it only works for known 'predators', to coin a phrase. to more broadly protect your IP info from unknown 'predators' i guess you need some different kind of strategy.
Oh yes, it's a very specific change and therefore can be easly tackled. This is done in the network layer but the correct way to do this is to instruct the browser not to fetch content outside the original domain. Explorer, or other browsers I know of, will not let you do this and this would break many sites for the user. A realistic way of doing this would be for J to disallow external avatars and only allow local avatars, hosted by styleforum. He could then allow us to upload our custom avatars but they could not be used to track us (except by J, of course&#33
wink.gif
. I don't know if Iconboard allows for this but I put this to J for consideration. B
I don't understand why this is such a big deal. You ought to consider the ip address you browse with public knowledge since you're leaving traces of it at every site you visit. If you're genuinely concerned with people knowing your ip address, then browse via a proxy. It'll slow things down for you but that's the tradeoff. You can also disable avatars in the control panel here but then things become that much less interesting. -Tom
 

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