Karen (and anyone else who's interested) the best way to avoid your posts getting confused w/ those of other is to log in w/ a username.
Let me give you a little detail about what that will and will not do.
Let's say you pick the username "Mickey Mouse". No one would be able to post as Mickey Mouse but you because you'd be the only one w/ the password. Readers would be able to reference other posts by Mickey Mouse and know that they all came from the same person (unless, of course, you gave the password to someone else). That's all readers would be able to find out about you that they can't find out through your anon postings.
From my point of view, it doesn't matter much whether you log in or not. Some ppl hit the site through a proxy that is either shared by a lot of other users (such as the AOL proxies) or that is intended to protect your anonymity. I can't tell from here w/o using some form of threats or coercion who might own a particular proxy IP at any given time.
Now,
if someone has enough incentive and/or legal standing, they could force me to divulge the logging data associated w/ any post(s). So far, I've never been forced to do this and, due to issue of jurisdiction and related matters, I honestly doubt that any law enforcement agency or civil court would value my logging data highly enough to go to the trouble of acquiring it.
That's a BIG "if" because I'm talking about things like criminal harassment, stalking, terroristic threats. Ya'll remember Nazi? I've heard and do believe that he's in some hot water legally over that rampage. A lot of his activities involved these fora. But I still haven't been contacted by any court or law enforcement agency requesting data. That's how far (at least!) you'd have to push it to expose yourself to any kind of reprecussions for posting here.
But, and I can't stress this enough, under that scenario, it wouldn't matter one wit whether you had posted anon or w/ a login. The data tying you to your words resides w/ your ISP and/or your proxy. That's who you have a contract with. Those are the only people who know for sure who contracted to use your IP at any given time.
Karen, I can't say for sure that the initial post wasn't yours. It's not that hard to acquire the use of an alternate IP address.
Bottom line is this. If you don't want readers to know who's talking, post anon. If you do want readers to have some idea who you are, then don't post anon.
Republican n. A liberty despising, money worshiping, control freak. Democrat n. A liberty despising, social engineering, control freak.
-- Anonymous
