If you post on a blog, who can identify you?

If you have a concerns about a psycho trying to locate your position during a friendly blog conversation or chat, you may want to consider using an Anonymizer or Ultimate Anonymity.However, there are limitations when going anonymous, SSL, Java, ActiveX and plugins may not work because they are halted at the security checkpoint. Sites like the FBI and related government offices won't let you view their site at all. If they don't know who you are, you don't get in. Logs of sites visited are kept by Anonymizer, but not address connection and user.

 

your computer in theory an IP address http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address .

you can do simple things like traceroute (in windows, issue "tracert xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" from the command line) and it shows you machine by machine how you get from your computer to the destination computer over the Internet. often the names of the computers are indicative of their physical location. try "tracert www.ferrarichat.com" for an example.

there are also services like http://www.quova.com/ that have built up huge databases of IP geolocation data that do this quite accurately.

your IP address is not necessarily unique, but it's directionally correct. you might be behind a firewall that makes all the machines in your home or office look like the same machine to the outside world.

the odds are they cannot get closer than your "general vicinity" - probably "within a few towns" area - never mind a neighborhood or a street or a house number.

doody.