My husband is an IT Professional and here's the skinny on this topic according to him: If those posters are on a dial up connection, their IP address changes everytime they make a dial up connection.

If those posters are using cable modem (if it works like RoadRunner) they most likely are using the same IP addresses. The IP lease usually lasts for a couple of weeks and is tied to the MAC address of your router or network adapter. When your lease expires it first tries to grab the same IP and usually does from the DHCP server. Most people who use cable modems use the same IP address for months and months.

There is no way any of use can tell exactly who these people are. Only the ISP knows and would never be able to release any information except to law enforcement. Doing a WHOIS on an IP address will only give you the ISP and the general location.

If these negative posters are using cable modem, chances are their IP addresses have been the same for a long time. If they have ever posted here before using their own names, the forum administrator should be able to match up IP addresses from the log.

This may be of interest.

I work for a very high profile criminal defense lawyer and we had a client that had used his computer for illegal activities and the police confiscated his computer and even though ALL activity could be traced to his computer he was acquitted because how could the jury possibly prove that it was him sitting at the keyboard typing. His crime was very serious too.

I guess my point is even if we could trace the person to the computer we could never prove it was the actual person typing the negative messages; many of us have teens or tweens and even let our friends use our computers.

Another good thing to know is that just because the IP says a certain state doesn’t mean that’s where the email or post came from. The ISP’s use routers and what may look like a post from Virginia it may have come from Oregon. There is no way to really determine this.

Also many of his emails had his IP address in them but the prosecutor learned that the victim had manipulated the content when he forwarded the letters to the Police.

So some advice to everyone when someone forwards an email you have no way to know if the sender manipulated the content.

I have a stat counter on my web page and can look at the visitor paths but there is no way I can be sure of who was really there. I can’t even block IP addresses because the IP addressees change so frequently that in a say or two the address that I blocked now has access again because they have a new IP.

Once I let a friend in Labs use my computers and she emailed people and posted from my IP. Her post was not mean but if it had been guess who would get blamed. I don’t let anyone use my computer anymore.

So unfortunately for now we’ll have to put up with the negative poster until technology comes up with a better way to track them.

My web log only goes back 30 days and Bravenet is a free service for this forum so I wonder how much data they will log and for how long.

I am proposing Jill make this forum accessible to people who log in. In other words, no more anonymous posts.

It is ridiculous to see the goings on and the insanity.

Madam Webmaster - Tear down this wall..... I mean, make this forum sane.

I agree with MN

It would go a long way in stopping the nasty attitudes