I have here a list of IP spoofers/anonymizers, and I will be blocking some of those IP numbers if we’ve had any problem posters from them. If you can’t post or log in, this may be the reason. We have found that a lot of trolls use these services. This may inconvenience some well-intentioned folks, and for that I apologize, but we have had enough.
Lynn Bodoni
Administrator
For the Straight Dope
OK. Unbelievably dumb question coming up - is it possible to be using one of these and not know it? It’s not the kind of IP number which is given by the ISP is it?
I feel dumb now ;).
Most likely not, Primaflora. Lynn is referring to places like safeweb and so forth. The dynamic IP assigned by your ISP, while it is an “anonymizer” of sorts, is not the same thing. Nor is a firewall proxy, which also hides your address (which is what you would use if you are one of those evil, satanic people who reads the Board from work… 
).
The whole thing seems silly.
I don’t know what a spoofer, but an anonymizer is the best way to prevent spam from joining bulletin boards.
I thought I’d look up “spoofing” to answer the implied question, but all I came up with is sites that explain why spoofing is desirable and how to do it, and those that tell how to prevent it. Plus this definition:“Spoofing
The deliberate transmission of fake signals to fool a GPS receiver. Spoofer must mimic a GPS satellite, rather like a psuedolite.”
What’s meant here?
IP spoofing is masking your real IP address with a false one. It can be used as part of a cracking attempt (pretending to be a trusted PC to gain access to PCs on someone else’s network). More likely in this context is the use of spoofing as a way to disguise one’s tracks – nobody can complain to your ISP about your posting if they can’t trace you.
B to B: anonymisers are used to hide your true location, so the downside is pretty obvious. If you don’t want spam, don’t give out an email address (or use a web-based secondary one, or put in random text to throw off harvesters).
How would that work? Seems like it would destroy the concept of making your address available. The thing I’ve seen for some websites is that people will convert the email name into a gif file, so it can be seen but not read.
I agree, Omniman.
However, since I don’t like junk mail, I don’t give out my email address unless I’m happy that I won’t get spam back.
If I’m unsure, I either don’t give an address, use a secondary email account I check about once a fortnight to clear crap out of, or try a scrambled address like ‘CrusoeAtHotmailDotCom’ (which isn’t my address, in case you were wondering).
If a human being wants to contact me, they still can.
Geocities has a recommendation that I use something like
myname@myservice.com
which comes out as myname@myservice.com when you click on it, but doesn’t have the “@” sign that spamming programs search for. I suppose the spamming programs can’t afford to waste their time looking for the longer variant, just to get the last 1% of names.
Lynn, can you please either post that list or mail it to me? It’s time for another security crackdown on my end.
Una
I swear by all that is holy (including swiss cheese and my underpants) that I am not, nor do I use, a spoofer. Nor am I associated with them in any way. Thank you.
You know, Swiss cheese notwithstanding, I doubt a spoofer would do you much good. As I gather from the above, it just sets a wrong “return address” on one’s transmission. Sort of like the spammer who has a “replyto address” of xxx@wrongnumber.gag But what would be the point on a message board? You would click on a link, and the page returned would go off into the WWW Dead Letter bucket.
If a person were using an anonymizer, the vast majority of the users wouldn’t realize it. It only shows up when a moderator checks the IP address of the post: Instead of finding out the user’s real ISP, the moderator would just find the IP of the anonymizer. The end result of this is usually a swift boot to the rear.
Oh, c’mon, Show_Biz, give at least some indication that you got the joke…
Odd… I seem to remember posting to this thread two days ago. Was it deleted or do I need to switch to decaf?