Why was this thread locked?

jrap

Joined Jun 25, 2006
1,125
RRavi was a member that has previously caused a lot of problems on the forums (I'm sure you can guess who). This is his second account created after being permanently banned.
 

JohnInTX

Joined Jun 26, 2012
4,787
I too sometimes have problems finding things on a big page. In FireFox, you can find things on a page using Ctrl-F. It will open a search box at the bottom of the screen. Type in 'thread' and click 'Highlight All'.
 

GopherT

Joined Nov 23, 2012
8,009
Maybe a a stupid question: what if the member in question posts from a different machine every time?

How is that IP hiding works? Oh, how many things I ignore...
You are referring to IP address as in "Internet Protocol". Jrap was talking about IP address as in InterPersonal Address. You don't want to know how this number is ascertained but, one he has it, he has it!
 

WBahn

Joined Mar 31, 2012
29,979
Maybe a a stupid question: what if the member in question posts from a different machine every time?

How is that IP hiding works? Oh, how many things I ignore...
There are a number of things you can do to hide your IP (from the perspective of making it less obvious that you are the same person that posted previously).

Most people have dynamically assigned IP addresses that change of a fairly frequent basis, so even having an identical IP address is no super-strong indicator that it is actually the same person (completely leaving aside the fact that even a given machine may be used by many different people). But most of the time your IP address (from a given location) will be derived from a fairly small block of potential IP addresses. Even if you log in from different physical locations, they will typically be within a fairly small geographic area that is tightly correlated with the physical location associated with the ISP that provided the IP address in use. There are certainly deliberate steps you can take to make the information in your IP address more obscure, but most people that want to come back to a forum as a different user after getting banned simply don't take any of those steps -- most aren't even aware that most forums (and many other sites) log your IP address as well as possibly many other things to begin with, let alone being conversant with anonymizers and such.

IP address is just one aspect that is taken into consideration. There are several other telltales that are looked at on a case-by-case basis.
 
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