# *Rick, or whoever

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Posted by Rick [Rick] on November 29, 1999 at 02:50:35 {DGglKT6Uj27mY4XD8K2cFMFBt36Xyc}:

In Reply to: Rick, or whoever posted by Moddy102 on November 28, 1999 at 21:02:28:

> How do you read the IP addresses in the posts now?

You can't read the IP addresses in the posts. The code is the basis of the IP address, but scrambled and parsed to where reverse decryption is not feasible. However, the uniqueness of the code allows readers to determine if two posters are coming from the same ISP.

Two of the same IP addresses is meaningless by itself, because a large number of posters share America Online IP's. Over 50% of our visitors come from AOL. (AOL IP addresses are contained in a small pool of IP numbers, so the likelihood of several posters from AOL sharing a single IP is high. (An IP address is comprised of many sockets, and so thousands of users can share an IP at any given moment.)

> Which part of the number represents what?

The first one-third of the characters in the code represents the date (so that every poster on any given date shares the same first-third of the code in their posts).

The second two-thirds of the characters in the code is based on the IP address (so that many posters from different ISP's have unique characters; but several posters from a single ISP like AOL coming in under different sockets of that IP, might have identical characters).

The last third of the characters in the code represents the login name in brackets of the post's author.

The only significance of two identities sharing the same middle portion of the code (thus the same IP address), is if their writing styles and other facets of their posts make them suspect to being the same individual. However, someone who is bent on posting under different personas could login under different ISP accounts or use software designed to change the outgoing IP. At the same time, innocent people could be using the same ISP. This holds true for roommates, members of the same household, and tons of other circumstances.

Rick

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