[brityank]

Interesting. But how would they get your IP? That would be kind of freaky if they were sitting on your or FR's subnet with a packet sniffer.

So let me add my little bit of paranoia to this discussion -- look at the bottom of every page's "Source" selection of its HTML. Free Republic's has the following:

<div style="font-size: 8pt; color: rgb(119, 119, 119); font-family: Arial;">
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson </div>


<script style="display: none;" src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">_uacct = "UA-2288668-1"; urchinTracker();</script>

</body></html>

It's not just FR, most websites have some method of tracking each IP visitor, and FR and a great majority use google-analytics.com -- the logs are fairly easy to get although up-to-the-minute logs are probably hacked. Of course, China doesn't have any hackers -- just ask them.       ;^)

 

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[TigersEye]

As I said before I don't know diddly about computers or servers so bear with me. It is one thing to get my IP # and another to find my machine and scan its ports isn't it? At that time I was on dial-up and randomly assigned an IP # too and the first thing I did was disconnect and reconnect. That didn't slow down the scans.

Everyone on the internet should know that they are not really anonymous from people with the right software and the motivation to use it. I expect that almost all governments have the tools. I consider myself cautious not paranoid so I will appreciate any corrections of my perceptions here. Thanks, brityank.