Isn’t it just as simple as making a program that flags two (or more) screen names coming from the same ip address?
I never understood why socks have to be “found out”.
Your plan is easy to circumvent-one user name at home, and another one at work.
IP addresses are not always static.
Yes, that would have been the way to solve the sock problem back in 1995, provided you were willing to spend the compute power to match all the IP addresses of ten thousand users against each other on a regular basis. But people now access the Internet from a much larger variety of IP addresses on a variety of devices, many of them which share addresses with a wide pool of users (e.g. cell phones) that sifting through IP addresses is going to provide a lot of false positives and only catch a small fraction of socks.
And you don’t see the ones that ARE detected. Not sure how many people know about the IP stuff, I would assume most people that don’t - would still get the idea when they see the error message - and then make up (if they felt like going through the effort) - a new account using cell phone, work, school, library, Starbucks.
If you use a different email and computer/Internet combo - it’s close to impossible for most websites to be able to tell. Stuff like phone codes and things like that can cut down on it, but can be a PITA to everyone else.
Also, there are plenty of legitimate dopers who may share the same IP address for other reasons, like living together or working at the same place.
Depending on how you sort your laundry, some of them may end up inside pants-legs or something. Also, check behind the dresser or under the bed.
:: nods :: Also the duvet cover. Damn that duvet cover.
Even in 1995, that’s a very small amount of computing power. The real reasons are, as you mentioned, that it doesn’t really work.
<nerd goggles on>
Yes, the match itself is pretty trivial, but you do have to hit the database to pull out the latest set of IPs on everyone. Given how slow a basic IP search was when I was a mod, that’s clearly an operation with some heft to it relative to the server resources.
</nerd goggles broken, taped back up>
My washing machine eats them. The dryer is a co-conspirator. I would probably have to kill them both to get them to give them up. Better just to buy new socks.
I’m working on a way to put small RFIDs in my socks.
It’s trivial to use an anonymous proxy to disguise your true IP, and even your country.
There are also plenty of legitimate users of proxies, so blocking them isn’t an option.
I signed up using my girlfriend’s computer that has a shared IP addy with her roomate (both of whom are posters). I got an email from one of the mods not long after asking about my situation. I’m guessing they are running just such a program.
Took just 25 seconds to trace your IP just now. Even with a less than optimal server.
Back when you were a mod, and when I first became a mod, it shut down the board for about 2-3 minutes do an IP search.
And the cats take care of any socks that are left over.
As mentioned before, there are proxies and VPNs freely available for anyone to use to obscure their “true” IP addresses. Hell, just unplugging your cable modem for an hour and then plugging it back in will almost certainly change your IP address if that’s what you use. It’s trivially easy.
Don’t websites usually log IP addresses for each member? I moderate on a site which records which IP addresses each member has logged on from ("IPs used in recent posts:"), and you can click on ‘Track User’ and see “Members possibly in the same range:”
Which is kinda cool now I come to think of it.
I just clicked on a random member and there are 17 IPs logged but no other members in the same range. That’s a lot, he must teach in several locations.
I just searched the IPs of one of our guests, and he/she has 10 IPs. All proxies.
Most users of those proxies are spammers. This person is not a spammer. Could be posting from a country which restricts internet access and may need proxies. Or…probably not.
There are literally billions of people who live in places where proxies are the normal (or only) means of accessing the internet.