Keeping track of who has viewed which threads?

How does vBulletin decide which threads it thinks I have or haven’t seen?

When I view a forum (the page with the list of threads), the most recent ones (that I presumably haven’t viewed yet?) are shown in boldface. . .

BUT . . .

I see the newer threads in bold face like this even though I have not signed in, AND even though I routinely delete ALL cookies in my browser. So where is this information saved? Is this maintained by vBulletin in a database on the server, and keyed to my IP number, or some such scheme?

(Note, though, I see this behavior only when using Firefox (an older version) on my Winders XP mochine. Most of the time, I use Firefox on my Linux box, where it works different: There, I never see ANY threads listed in bold-face under the same circumstances.)

How does this work?

I think it’s based on IP address and “Last Visited” date.

I’ve never been able to figure out exactly what the system is tracking, mostly because it doesn’t seem to do a very good job.

People have been complaining about this feature as long as we’ve been on vBulletin and we have no idea how to make this come out better, sorry.

In addition to what’s been mentioned, it must have something to do with your membership, if you have one. Because when I sign in, the list of viewed threads changes. And if I sign in on a different computer, it “syncs”.