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Speculation and opinion related to local events

Discussion in 'Expat Section' started by TheDude, Apr 4, 2019.

  1. furriner

    furriner DI Forum Adept Restricted Account

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    I will say this: If I were anti-foreigner and I wanted to get you arrested for sedition for your posts, I would only have “Rye83” to start from. Next I would have to find the DI server and demand records, which I will get. So then, I am not personally so technically adept at looking at the records of posts to that server but it is probably there since it appears that DI saves our posts indefinitely (fair warning to newbies). So I hire a geek to find your offending post(s) and the IP address from which they came. With these IP addresses your ISP is id’d so I go to them and ask which one of those customers had that IP address. They give me your name, address and maybe more. It is your IP address that gives you away along with the probability that DI saves all of the posts with the IP address information. So without taking additional measures, whatever is said here is transparent about you, however it is not easy to get the information unless someone went directly to the moderator and asked for the information AND your information was correct for ID.


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  2. Outcast

    Outcast DI Forum Adept

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    that does not always work so well here, where sometimes thousands of internet users have the same originating IP addfress, depending on their provider.
     
  3. SkipJack

    SkipJack DI Senior Member

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    I don't know.
    This is exactly the method Russian trolls use to spread chaos. They use a VPN to gain an IP address in the country they pretend to be in. Then they create characters on forums and post crap. The posts appear to be from users in the country.

    On DI the little flag you see that shows the country a poster is from can be easily manipulated.
     
  4. furriner

    furriner DI Forum Adept Restricted Account

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    I did not realize that.


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  5. Rye83

    Rye83 with pastrami Admin Secured Account Highly Rated Poster SC Connoisseur Veteran Army

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    It certainly wouldn't be impossible. Everyone has their own little quirks, syntax and word choice when writing. People also tend to repeat ideas, many times word for word. Not to mention on forums people tend to give a lot of general information about themselves. If I were really interested in finding out who you were there are tools out there that could help me identify your profiles on other websites. Current AI can identify people just by the way they write with around a 70-80% accuracy rate. I think 255 posts would probably be more than enough data to pin you down. It would be difficult, as you mention, but certainly not impossible. The only way to be completely anonymous on the internet is to not use the internet.

    Obviously, I'm not in the US. :wink:
     
  6. furriner

    furriner DI Forum Adept Restricted Account

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    Maybe but it is also a pretty good way to stay anonymous, reminding me of “Pretty Good Privacy” schemes of encryption. Encryption is also used when you use a TOR browser. It becomes more expensive to track you down with every barrier you put up. Yes, maybe Russian trolls or maybe much darker forces than that. Wrye talks about AI for which I suppose somebody, like Snowden would have used at the US NSA to track down international bad guys or Hillary’s political opponents. I am sure NSA listening centers have all the classified AI technology of which he speaks and I also would agree that a sovereign government of even a small country might spare no expense as they do have the money. For anonymity, we can only get “pretty good” but not failsafe. For DI I don’t even take these precautions but I mention this because of previous stated concerns.


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  7. OP
    OP
    TheDude

    TheDude DI Forum Patron Highly Rated Poster

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    Too lazy to look right now, but I believe the server is in Singapore and it's a U.S. company. You would have to go through the Singapore system to get those records.

    Xenforo logs the IP for certain things such as login. Your IP address would also go to the Apache server logs, but not sure how long those logs are kept around. I think the dev team sweeps them occasionally to open up drive space.

    Nothing is ever fail safe, but you can get pretty d*mn good with Tor. You have to adjust the settings. The feds can get you if you have javascript enabled while visiting a compromised (by the feds) site. There's no known exploits of Tor itself, but some have traced Tor development as possibly at one time funded by the NSA and believe that the NSA might have an unknown exploit in their back pocket. However, they wouldn't use this for just any criminal behavior because they would be showing their hand. Tor users would pick up on the trick and the NSA would lose its tool (if it exists.) You can go even further by using "Tails" which is a Linux distribution setup with Tor. That would help ensure that you aren't going to be compromised by something else running on your system.

    VPN's aren't good for security. They are meant for getting around country detection controls, among other things. If your IP address is traced to a VPN, then your IP address could be obtained from the provider just as they could with this site.

    You're more likely to get outed by doing something stupid rather than getting caught through Tor. For example, the guy who was running one of the first drug sites on the dark web was busted through a history of asking questions related to the development of the site. The profiles of these questions led back to his real identity. The Google search force was strong with the people who figured that one out.
     
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  8. ShawnM

    ShawnM DI Forum Patron ★ No Ads ★ Highly Rated Poster Showcase Reviewer Blood Donor Veteran Air Force

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    I've spent 25+ years out of my 49 years living/working overseas; I honestly can't figure out why an expat would be overly concerned about things that you have no control over as it would relate to politics or any officials. It has always been my thing to never talk politics or religion, I do have my opinions and some are strong but for the most part I keep them to myself and don't put them out on a forum.

    Obviously we can complain on a forum about things being out of stock or the frustrations with getting things accomplished. Sometimes it sucks but I've been in places that are much more difficult to deal with.

    I've been a member of this forum for a decade now as it is a great format for sharing information and experiences. The expat community seems to be quite diverse and I think that really adds to things. Not to leave out locals as I believe there are quite a few that are part of the forum and their input on discussions is very important.

    Shawn
     
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    Last edited: Apr 5, 2019
  9. Notmyrealname

    Notmyrealname DI Forum Luminary Highly Rated Poster Showcase Reviewer

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    Shush (:smile:) ... you are breaking his carefully-constructed cover. He is Mr Rye and the profile pic is perhaps not him.
     
  10. Rye83

    Rye83 with pastrami Admin Secured Account Highly Rated Poster SC Connoisseur Veteran Army

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    It is not only governments that are capable of authorship recognition and stylometry. And the better AI gets the easier and more publicly available it will become.

    Personally if I were looking for you I would start by taking a large sampling of your posts and run it through a simple plagiarism checker and see where that takes me. Chances are you have repeated yourself verbatim, or very close to it, several times online.
     
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