[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Chris T

Hmmm, saw that this morning. It's amazing how some people think the internet is a truly anonymous place to be ... prolly the same people who pick their nose while waiting at traffic lights and think no-one can see in to their car.

Following on from the post I have quoted above (from this thread ), I find it interesting that people still consider the Internet to be truly anonymous. I mean, Ok, we have a fair degree of anonymity on here (after all, we know each other's posting styles, but we don't know for sure who posted something), but what we post can often be traced through our IP addresses.

I'll give you an example. At work, we were contacted by a company where the Intrusion Detection System on their network had picked up a hacking attempt from one of our PCs. We were able to trace who was logged on to that PC at the time relatively easily. The user concerned was surprised we were able to trace them.

On another occasion, a "serious hacker" was surprised when he started sending out various emails from University computers, that, while not actually offensive, were against University policy. He thought he could evade detection because he sent them from an "anonymous" hotmail account. He didn't realise that hotmail embed the IP of the sending computer in the email headers. We simply had to look up who was logged on at the time.