Set Square wrote:

As a matter of interest, just how easy/difficult is it to establish the true
identity of a poster. For example, where would I find the detailed headers
for *this* message? Are they likely to show any or all of:
* my News.Individual.net account ID
* the IP address from which I posted it
* my ISP
* my logon account name
* etc.?

OE does not make looking at the raw message quite as easy as most
newsreaders, but a quick CTRL+U (show message source) in mozzila give us:

Path:
ptn-nntp-reader04.plus.net!nntp-xref-master.plus.net!ptn-nntp-spool01.plus.net!ptn-nntp-spool02.plus.net!ptn-nntp-spool03.plus.net!nntp-peering.plus.net!ptn-nntp-feeder03.plus.net!solnet.ch!solnet.ch!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail
From: "Set Square"
Newsgroups: uk.d-i-y
Subject: OT: Anonymity of posts - was: Previous owners lied about works
done - Got them?
Date: Sun, 12 Jun 2005 11:39:11 +0100
Lines: 29
Message-ID:
References:

. com

.com
X-Trace: individual.net faBkxWQldmr+t9Go3KahgQKmGv3NRps8C5TABKFQyTWTMEwJvF
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1437
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1441
Xref: ptn-nntp-reader04.plus.net uk.d-i-y:125803

Which tells us your ISP plus other stuff like the software you are
using. Some ISPs news gateways will add more information to the headers
like the IP address posted from. So with help of Tiscali it would be
simple enough to get your real identity.

A bit of data mining would probably turn up a fair bit of info as well
but without any official involvement i.e. just collecting together all
the various snippits of personal information that you may have divulged
over the years in different posts.

As with all these things it is a case of knowing who you defending
against. For keeping Joe User from knowing who you are, there is
probabbly no need to do much given the chances are he won't want to know
anyway. If however you wanted to keep your ID secure from the national
security services you would have to work very hard indeed!.

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/