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Alex · 10-12-2006, 01:19 PM

Mask an IP? No, not even the anonymizers do that. An IP has to be revealed to your server for every transaction otherwise there would be no way for it to send information back to the user. It would be like getting mail without a return address.

The way anonymizers work is that they act as a middle man for the traffic. User tells anonymizer to get page A, anonymizer requests it, gets it, and then passes it along to user. So from the Web sites perspective the anonymizer is the user.

The other factor is static vs. dynamic IP addresses and this is what makes it hard to catch the intelligent sock puppet. I have cable for my internet and therefore have a static IP address assigned specifically to me. So everytime I've been on the internet for the last 18 months it has been with the same IP address.

Dial-up users and most DSL users, however, get a new IP address at the beginning of every session. So a smart sock puppet will use different sessions for different activities so that the IP addresses will be different. Or go so far as to use completely different computers (say only posting as the sock puppet from work while as themselves from home or using a library computer for one of the identities).

If you don't have direct IP matches, you generally can only build a circumstantial case against a sock puppet. For example, if they are just logging out of their DSL and then back in, both sets of IP addresses might resolve to a pool of IP addresses owned by a Cincinnatti ISP. Posting styles may be similar (maybe they both always misspell the same word). They gave the same birthdates when registering, etc., etc.

But if they continue to deny it and nobody knows the people personally, it will always boil down to a circumstantial case without absolute certainty.

10-12-2006, 01:19 PM	#4
Alex . Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 13,354	Mask an IP? No, not even the anonymizers do that. An IP has to be revealed to your server for every transaction otherwise there would be no way for it to send information back to the user. It would be like getting mail without a return address. The way anonymizers work is that they act as a middle man for the traffic. User tells anonymizer to get page A, anonymizer requests it, gets it, and then passes it along to user. So from the Web sites perspective the anonymizer is the user. The other factor is static vs. dynamic IP addresses and this is what makes it hard to catch the intelligent sock puppet. I have cable for my internet and therefore have a static IP address assigned specifically to me. So everytime I've been on the internet for the last 18 months it has been with the same IP address. Dial-up users and most DSL users, however, get a new IP address at the beginning of every session. So a smart sock puppet will use different sessions for different activities so that the IP addresses will be different. Or go so far as to use completely different computers (say only posting as the sock puppet from work while as themselves from home or using a library computer for one of the identities). If you don't have direct IP matches, you generally can only build a circumstantial case against a sock puppet. For example, if they are just logging out of their DSL and then back in, both sets of IP addresses might resolve to a pool of IP addresses owned by a Cincinnatti ISP. Posting styles may be similar (maybe they both always misspell the same word). They gave the same birthdates when registering, etc., etc. But if they continue to deny it and nobody knows the people personally, it will always boil down to a circumstantial case without absolute certainty.
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