As per the number of thumbs, many share my concern for IP confidentiality. I know quite a few share owners of NOT in remote areas who do not want to be identified or possibly targeted and have asked me to make sure agoracom addresses this post. I see this as an important issue.

This is a repeat of the previous post, just cleaned up a bit. One get's tired of stale responses and opinions. There's nothing more boring then listening to an NBA star interviewed. Where's the life and passion? It's all coached and trite. The post had some heat behind it.

Original at:

http://tradingchief.com/group-board.php?symbol=@AGORA&name=Agora&subject=Re:-agoracom-to-display-partial-ip-addresses-of-all-posts-as-of-&pid=15993

Here is the cleaned up version.

IP adresses by trading chief

posted on Apr 18, 10 02:05PM

Quote:
TradingChief.Com will never, repeat- NEVER display a partial or entire IP to anyone. In fact to get it from us they will require a writ from the SEC or a Court order.

---------------------------------------- -----------------

There are exceptions to this promise. For instance if you are involved in child porn,exploitation of children, criminal activities, or are found to have been using our servers for illegal use, we will personally walk your IP down to the RCMP. That is the level of criminal activity that would allow us to release your IP
---------------------------------------- -----------------

"There is no need to display a partial IP "IF" the company that is running the board is concerned about IP privacy. Releasing even portions of an IP is an “ineffective” way of attempting to rectify a problem and is a breach of personal privacy, in our opinion. Let me explain why.

Lets suppose you live in a small community in Alberta. I have XXX.XXX.212.059 as your posted IP on Agora com. Well I am half way there. During one of your posts you say. "You know XXX-T is such a polluting piece of ‘yuckiness’ I sure am glad I live in Vaughn".
I now look up Vaughn Alberta and find the only internet provider is Blankenship Internet. I find they have two servers. 189.211 and 189.201 so now I have
189.201.21.059 or 189.211.21.059 which is your complete IP.
How are you feeling about your privacy now?

But wait, there's more, I then approach the IPS owner and squeeze him, to give me your name because I have 3 limos outside his farm house, with 9 lawyers in them!!

HOW SAFE DO YOU FEEL NOW?

Example 2

If you were actually going to do something about this issue you would have developed the software we have developed. An IP checking piece of software is so easy to construct.

Also, many know about IP masking. I wonder if Agora is aware of it? Do Agora programmers understand Dynamic IP addressing, Proxy servers, IP Masking, Browser Masking? It's been around for a while.

Dynamic IP is where the last 3 can change without any intervention or malice by the user? so for instance XXX.XXX.212.123 can be XXX.XXX.212.125 in the next post quite easily, and nothing nefarious has been done, so is this fellow now suspect?

Perhaps this release of partial IP may lose the trust of its members, and its companies, that is a fact. So let us assume for a moment, you realy wish to carry on with your multiple alias ways, but would like to trick your members.

Example 3

What prevents the company from allocating 2000 Phoney "6 digit numbers" to allow 2000 office aliases ? Absolutely nothing! George, you know how to do it!! George lets suppose you allocate the bottom right corner of every message to show the last 6 digits of the IP, "for honesty sake".
Now, when Agora Staff member post, you block their real IP "6" and overwrite with a phoney "6". Following me so far?

So you insert a dummy number for all the Agora Employees. To ensure you are not caught, you ensure that the members IP goes through, and the member sees his last 6, and says man this is working well, no more multiples!

So now, Joe the Agora employee signs in and posts. You force XXX.XXX.122.019 and block out his real IP, and allocate 122.019 to Joe from now till they day Joe dies.

Then when Joe from Agora logs in as Sam. You force insert XXX.XXX 069.126 blocking out his real IP and allocate 069.126 to Sam till the day he dies.
Then when Sam logs out and logs in as Sally your force insert of XXX.XXX.155.200 blocking her real IP, and, Sally keeps 155.200 until she dies.

So really George the only thing you really "have to do" is to ensure that the members IP's are real, that's all and you can still keep your office aliases.

Sam, Joe and Sally are posting from the same front office that you were "disgusted to find one office Alias a mere year ago" and assured everyone, no more would exist.

Trading Chief goes on to question Agoracom’s integrity and believes Agoracom failed to offer a real solution

- Thank You TradingChief.