Comments for I thought my posts were private/anonymous/protected?

Comment from Lutz Pansegrau on 2009-09-16

2009-09-16T08:40:22Z

Thanks again Leo, I wasn't aware of that fact. Did the reading about zomie botnets and how they created (Kaspersky, Symantec).

]]>

A comment on: I thought my posts were private/anonymous/protected?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from Lutz Pansegrau on 2009-09-08

2009-09-08T15:40:55Z

Thanks Leo for enlighten me here. Yet, in this regard I would like to give a suggestion. Instead of producing/developing and maintaining Antivirus/AntiSpam/AntiMalware software to fight against intrusions or asign huge and costly human effort to trace back offenders, it makes more sense to me in developing software which does the back tracing with a minimum of human interference and with an automatic result of blocking or forwarding the addressee. Unfortunately, even possible, who pays for it and therefore there's no profit. May be governments would do to protect their community.

with zombie botnets now responsible for the majority of the spam, automated backtrace and block would actually accomplish very little.

09-Sep-2009

]]>

A comment on: I thought my posts were private/anonymous/protected?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from Mike on 2009-09-05

2009-09-05T19:20:17Z

So, to clarify, it's POSSIBLE, but difficult and often prohibitively expensive. Which means someone would be spending lots of money on subpoenas to identify the source of defamation for potentially little recovery of "damages". Basically, "So sue me for everything I don't own." It just seems to me that it's not all that much risk for a blogger to "talk mean" about someone on the internet, and a lot of expense trying to get even for it.

]]>

A comment on: I thought my posts were private/anonymous/protected?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from Pookey on 2009-09-03

2009-09-03T08:00:08Z

The basic moral of the story is that the moment you commit a crime, you lose your privacy. In fact, even if you don't commit a crime you can lose your privacy if a court order inadvertently includes access to your details.

]]>

A comment on: I thought my posts were private/anonymous/protected?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from Charles Tilley on 2009-09-01

2009-09-02T03:44:08Z

If these nitpicky things can be traced,than why can't the crooks who are daily trying to get me to click onto a link to "properly prove my idenity" be caught? I forward these very professonial lookalikes to the abuse department of Bank of America almost on a daily basis. And they always email me back,"thanking me" and they are very close to catching these people and shutting down their website. I believe every email I get from them are basically "form letters",because they all say the very same thing! My real point is,all this technology is available, why not use it to catch the REAL bad guys, freaks who like child porno, crooks who try to get people to "click" onto a link so they can rip them off,etc.

See my previous response to Lutz: "possible" is not the same as "easy".

02-Sep-2009

]]>

A comment on: I thought my posts were private/anonymous/protected?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from Lutz Pansegrau on 2009-09-01

2009-09-01T17:48:43Z

Dear Leo,

as said "it is (technically) possible to trace someone back, for what ever reasons", I wonder why it is than not possible to get rid of those persons/institutions who spread virus software, malware etc over the internet? On the other hand realizing that there has been established a huge industry which sells with great profit software to fight against such intrusions, I must come to the conclusion that it is (technically) Not possible. Or is it? Why must we use a pill to superimpose the disease instead of eradicating it?

Remember, "possible" is not the same as "easy". In spammers cases specifically they have adopted techniques that make it extremely difficult and time consuming to trace them back. So much so that the amount of work required to do it is often simply out of reach of all but the largest and most well funded organziations. And even after having done so (because it has been done, repeatedly) a hundred new spammers shows up to take their place, and the expensive process repeats.

02-Sep-2009

]]>

A comment on: I thought my posts were private/anonymous/protected?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from Bill on 2009-09-01

2009-09-01T17:05:03Z

The sources you provided had some interesting details. According to CNET article of August 18th, the judge didn't order the identity to be released. According to it, the judge told Google to tell the blogger to "inform the blogger that he or she should probably get a lawyer, as there is a risk of unmasking."
The lawyer then said that the blogger had called a person "psychotic, lying, whoring...skank" but it wasn't meant as defamatory.

According to the blogger's twisted logic, Google has a lot of money, so it should spend it defending her against repercussions of what she says.

]]>

A comment on: I thought my posts were private/anonymous/protected?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from MissInformation on 2009-09-01

2009-09-01T16:26:26Z

Glenn P. - your comment is irrelevant to this post. Also, please read up:

In formal usage, the noun for the Internet has traditionally been treated as a proper noun and written with an initial capital letter, that is, a majuscule or upper-case "I".

However, critics argue that some things that are unique yet distributed, such as "the power grid", "the telephone network", and even "the sky", are not considered proper nouns, and are thus not capitalized. Since at least 2002 it has been theorized that Internet has been changing from a proper noun to a generic term.[1] Words for new technologies, such as Phonograph in the 19th century, are sometimes capitalized at first, later becoming uncapitalized.[1] It was suggested as early as 1999 that Internet might, like some other commonly used proper nouns, lose its capital letter.[2]

- That said -
Thanks for the article Leo! I actually think it is comforting to know the internet isn't so anonymous. A child pornographer shouldn�t be anonymous, and neither should those who maliciously spread false information (be it of a personal nature or false information to mislead the public about a product or service). It�s good to know that via a court order, some of these people can be caught.

]]>

A comment on: I thought my posts were private/anonymous/protected?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from Glenn P. on 2009-09-01

2009-09-01T15:37:38Z

You wrote:

So what does all this mean for the "average" person using the internet?

A nitpick on spelling, Leo -- That grates! -- the word "Internet" is always capitalized! Grrr! :(

Actually, as another poster has already commented, that's subject to debate. The internet is as ubiquitous as the automobile these days, and IMO no longer warrants capitalization.

02-Sep-2009

]]>

A comment on: I thought my posts were private/anonymous/protected?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from Philip on 2009-08-25

2009-08-25T10:40:33Z

So Leo, does this mean that the buck stops with the owner of the line/internet link? ie Am I right in thinking that if a comment was posted at say, a MacDonalds or Starbucks, then the only possible trace would be through cctv in the store, or am I missing something?

Well, that's one scenario, but we also don't know if there's other information available depending on the software being used. Perhaps that Starbucks router also logs MAC addresses, which ID specific machines. Some email programs include the machine name in the email headers - that would be a peice of data to help ID the sender. There's often more. It's not as easy as the crime TV shows make it out to be, but there's random bits of data that when collected by someone with enough motivation and smarts can often lead further than you might think.

25-Aug-2009

]]>

A comment on: I thought my posts were private/anonymous/protected?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.