Dear Members,

On April 16, we announced a plan to display partial IP addresses of all posts made on or after Monday April 26, 2010. The measure was introduced in order to provide our community with greater transparency with respect to posts on AGORACOM. As a result of this new measure, members would be able to view other members who may be using the same IP address with just one click – and report any suspicious activity via the AGORACOM violations system.

MEMBER FEEDBACK – WE’RE LISTENING

Though the announcement received a lot of praise from members, we also received feedback in the form of concerns that a display of even a partial IP addresses may lead to privacy issues pertaining to location and or geography. Though we were confident that any such issues were remote, we remain true to our philosophy of building and upgrading AGORACOM on the feedback of our members.

As such, we came up with a solution that maintains the privacy AGORACOM members have come to enjoy, while still achieving the goal of easily viewing members that may share the same IP address.

CHANGES TO IP ADDRESS TRACKING

Given the fact that the primary purpose of the measure is to provide members with an ability to view other members who may be using the same IP address, we have revised the measure as follows:

1. We will not display any part of the IP address within posts. No partial IP. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
2. We will still provide one-click access to view members that share the same IP address
3. The upgrade will be implemented for all posts made on or after Wednesday, April 28, 2010. It will not apply to posts made prior to April 28, 2010.

As a result of this new measure, members will still be able to view other members who may be using the exact same IP address with just one click – and report any suspicious activity via the AGORACOM violations system. At the same time, members do not have to worry about any part of their specific IP address being displayed to the public.

HOW IT WORKS – PRIVACY INTACT

We want to repeat that no part of a member’s IP addresses will be displayed, so there will be no change to the privacy of our members. Rather, within each post, all members will be able to read a button that says “IP Check”. The IP address of that post is tracked within the AGORACOM back-end, as it has been over the last couple of years, and will simply match members that are sharing the same IP address.

HOW IT WORKS – TRANSPARENCY

Members that are suspicious of a particular member’s posting will be able to click on “IP Check”. The AGORACOM system, which keeps track of the IP address in our back end, will automatically display any other members that share the same IP address. A match does not necessarily mean a violation has occurred but it will allow members to quickly and easily compare the posts of members sharing an IP address for potential multiple alias violations. If a member suspects a multiple alias violation, they can then easily report it via our “Report Violation” system.

For the greater part, user's who have been identified using more than one alias, use two and four accounts. 100% of the examples so far of IP addresses that have 5 or more users are users connecting to our site using a shared network or a Dynamic IP. In these cases, we respectfully advise that members seek the assistance of an admin, who has access to more detailed protocols and can conclude without a shred of doubt if these multiple accounts belong to one or many users.

Once more, we don't want anybody belitled if it is determined that they may or may not be using one more alias. This is a violation to our six rules of use and your posts, and profiles may be removed.

We want to thank all of you for your great feedback and for continuing to make AGORACOM the best small-cap community on the web. We look forward to any questions and comments you may have pertaining to our new IP address upgrade.

Regards,
George, Paul et al