Privacy and the Internet

[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.

[Halcyon]

People dont seem to be aware of the ways you can trace people back. There are so many ways these days to trace back to someone and it is hard to actually be on the net as an anonymous user.

Furthermore, the fact that people are getting into wireless routers and not securing them enough, people are able to get to them even easier by just logging into any network available.

I think people should be made a lot more aware of privacy and security for both themselves and also to stop other people hacking them.

[MadGamer]

So its not just spyware/viruses and firewalls concerned then? What i find amazing is whats been mentioned above, i mean i now know how easy it is to trace someone back to their IP Address. We have a network of something like 150+ computers on our school network with a piece of software called "Securus" which some of you may of heard of. Anyway when we type in a rude word or the word "Game" or write an email, the Admin, can see who was on the PC at the time, what time, the username etc. And do you know what makes me laugh, the teachers let the kids get away with it.