[Techtalk] Getting names and addresses of forum users

[Meredydd Luff]

OK...

I would like to challenge anyone who feels like it to retrieve as much 
information on me as they can. My general privacy policy is that I don't 
reveal much more than you can find from my school email address - I'd like to 
put that to the test :-)

Meredydd

On Thursday 19 September 2002 10:51, Telsa Gwynne wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 19, 2002 at 05:27:07PM +0000 or thereabouts, Arashi wrote:
> > At one linux forum I often visit, someone recently said he(she?)
> > was planning to publish (though not at this particular forum) the
> > real names and addresses of trolls who had been regularly flaming
> > him/her.
> >
> > The impression I got from that thread was that grabbing people's
> > names and addresses thru a forum they're members of is quite easy.
> > Is this true, or is it just script kiddie bravado?  How is this
> > possible?  I'm not asking because I want to do it myself - I just
> > don't want it to happen to me.
>
> Depends.
>
> I once came across an hilarious but alarming thread on a
> bulletin board where someone caused a lot of trouble.
> Someone else said "Stop hiding behind what you think is
> your anonymity or I'll show you how thin that veil is" or
> something to that effect. They didn't stop and in fact
> said "You're just showing off, you don't know who I am"
> or similar.
>
> And in sequence, the guy started posting his IP address,
> his account name, his probable physical location, his
> school, the last few digits of his phone number..
> ...and for his final trick, rang up his house and got
> his parents. "Oh, hey. Tell him I rang, will you?"
>
> As the thread started, a lot of people were saying "serves
> you right" to the victim of this: I gather he basically
> spent his time being as obnoxious as he could. Towards the
> end I got the impression that people were thinking, "hey,
> enough is enough".
>
> The guy doing all this maintained that in the process he broke
> no laws whatsoever. It's entirely possible that it this was
> indeed the case.
>
> Somewhere on the (massive) Junkbusters website is a list of
> resources to demonstrate how non-anonymous you can be:
> it includes links to a variety of sites which will perform
> searches for you. Right now, of course, I can't find the
> thing.
>
> Telsa
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