"Aluxe" <aluxelocochon@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1g5u1r8q8ztgp$.1a9ngqoflqnt2.dlg@40tude.net.. .
> On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 19:58:19 GMT, David H. Lipman wrote:
>> All of your subject matter is on COMSEC and alt.computer.security is
>> the ONLY News Group
>> you need to post to.
>>
> Hi David,
> I don't know what a COMSEC is but I will look it up.

There is a lot of interesting technical discussion here, but I would like to
take a different approach
From all the posts here and on the 'firewall' newsgroup, I believe I
understand what Aluxe is after.

Certainly we can trace posts here by screen name or IP (of the router) , and
if the IP changes it would make it more difficult to correlate posts if made
under a different name.
When we post, we expect that our message will be read, and the consequence
of that is that we identify ourselves to some degree. Some of us hide our
e-mail address - I don't mind if mine shows.

There was mention made of posts to 'personals' type groups, and not wishing
these posts to be correlated with technical posts. The use of different
'screen names' helps. But there is still the matter of IP address.
Somebody could determine my IP address, and scan all usenet posts for today
and discover that I also posted to the 'windows98' group, because a post
there had the same IP address, even if it was under a different name. If I
had used a different screen name AND had changed my IP address, that
correlation could not be made.
It is worth noting that nobody 'owns' a usenet screen name - I have seen the
same name used by different posters. Therefore posts having the same 'screen
name' suggests but does not proove that they were made by the same person.

It would appear that, in order to cover ones tracks for this scenario, one
would have to do the technical (public) posts from home and either use a
different name with dial up, a public computer, or take the laptop to a
hotspot for the 'personals' posts. These can still be traced to some degree,
but with normal tools could not correlate the technical poster with the
'personals' poster.

This has nothing to do with security, but does grant a measure of privacy.

Comments?