Question about posting

[Country4ever]

Hi all,
How come if you don't log in, it lists your posts as "guest", but sometimes it says underneath that who you really are, but sometimes not? Thanks.

[LyleHaze]

Unlike some other sites, this site allows anyone to post, whether they are "registered" or not. Also whether they "sign in" or not.

If someone posts without signing in, they cannot be "positively identified", but the board can guess, IF it recognizes your I.P. information from a previous post.

At least, that's how I think it works.. I could be wrong.

LyleHaze

[roster]

If you don't log in, the forum has a program that reads your IP address (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ip_address) and finds the IDs that have logged in from this IP address before. It then displays these IDs under "Guest".

This was done to discourage members from logging out and making nasty attacks anonymously.

[Country4ever]

Thanks ya'll.
But I wonder why it has just put "guest" a couple times for me, with no name in parentheses?

[kteague]

Maybe site was accessed from a different computer when no name was added?

[Country4ever]

No, always from the same computer.

[GumbyCT]

Maybe your IP changed? Who knows?

[roster]

Thanks ya'll.
But I wonder why it has just put "guest" a couple times for me, with no name in parentheses?

Quoting from that Wikipedia article I cited above:

The IP address acts as a locator for one IP device to find another and interact with it. It is not intended, however, to act as an identifier that always uniquely identifies a particular device. In current practice, an IP address is not always a unique identifier, due to technologies such as dynamic assignment and network address translation.

[Country4ever]

Thanks Rooster,
Sometimes I get a little anal about understanding things!