On 2009-07-03, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

[ ... ]

And that ability leads to the newsreader or the browser
pre-fetching information from the site, which allows the site to record
a "visit" even if you did not intend one -- and to record your IP
address (less of a problem with dynamic IPs, but mine are static.)

Well, my IP address is dynamic for sure, but it doesn't change very
often, so I suppose people could track this. But there are lots of
tracking methods, and new ones every day, so if I really cared about
this I would use one of those zero knowledge proxy services.

Actually, can you arrange a dynamic IP range with short enough leases to
sow confusion where appropriate?

I think that it could be done -- but since I have web servers
and mail servers, they *need* static IPs. And I'm not sure how much
inefficiency it would introduce to cause leases to be terminated on five
minute intervals or less.

[ ... ]

And this is not counting what the news server does when it folds
long lines. (Both marked lines were folded as I received them, and that
makes it more difficult for a program to be *sure* what range should be
underlined. :-) For that matter, some folding will introduce a space at
the beginning of each extra line created by folding, which can confuse
the underline algorithm even more, and make what it encloses incorrect.

Folding and quoting is a problem regardless, so nothing is lost by
telling at least the first generation where the URL starts and stops.

Right -- but saying that it will be underlined is making
presumptions as to the nature and behavior of all the newsreaders
involved.

Enjoy,
DoN.

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