Using your real name?

[C°KéM@ñ]

I use this handle for more than 11 years now. I do this because I know that the most important thing to protect on the internet is your identity.

Furthermore, it is a fact that all european ISP's are retaining (or are going to retain) communications traffic data of their subscribers. Since these data can be used for the prosecution of a whole range of crimes, I want to remain as anonymous as possible. This includes calling via pre-paid cards, communicating through anonymous proxies and using handles.

[imported_spankdidly]

I think this is a false assumption. They've built up the "magnificent reputation" because they know what they're talking about NOT "because they've posted under their real name".

The thing is johndoe who posts on comp.lang.c and is proven wrong a number of times will not continue to try to help people for 10 years, he'll fade quietly into the night. Maybe he'll come back after a few months/years of work/study but it's doubtful that he'll stick with his original name/nick. Though you could argue that he should in order to show-up the initial doubters.

It's the same here. There are a number of names which people trust/listen to, know a lot, and have been around for quite a while. Then there are also 1000s of names (accounts) which have been used only a handful of times.

Trusting someone more or less based on the fact that they go by a "real" name vs a "fake" name is just SILLY. I could have registered with the nick "fred_thomas" how would you know this is my real name? Why would you put greater trust in that than in "thorin" or "barry" or "streaker69"?

You can argue that the people in comp.lang.c even use their work email addresses etc but then the question becomes what keeps anyone from posting using that detail? I could decide I wanna be a Cisco employee like "reswa...@cisco.com <Ravikumar Eswaran>" who has posted in comp.security.firewalls if I wanted.

Or Spankdidly. Damn! And Actually, Spankdidly IS my real name. My parents were evil bastards.

I use this handle for more than 11 years now. I do this because I know that the most important thing to protect on the internet is your identity.

Furthermore, it is a fact that all european ISP's are retaining (or are going to retain) communications traffic data of their subscribers. Since these data can be used for the prosecution of a whole range of crimes, I want to remain as anonymous as possible. This includes calling via pre-paid cards, communicating through anonymous proxies and using handles.

I dont think THAT much paranoia is worth it IMHO. All it takes is one slip up and they'll find you. I dont really want anyone going through my garbage cans although I really have nothing to hide. Post something, 1 time, from an internet cafe, and you're on camera, and they got ya. I'm more worried about the world coming to an end (because the next world war will be fought with buttons and remotes) than I am that the feds know I downloaded "call of duty 2" from the inturwebs. Not that I did of course.

[C°KéM@ñ]

I dont think THAT much paranoia is worth it IMHO. All it takes is one slip up and they'll find you. I dont really want anyone going through my garbage cans although I really have nothing to hide. Post something, 1 time, from an internet cafe, and you're on camera, and they got ya. I'm more worried about the world coming to an end (because the next world war will be fought with buttons and remotes) than I am that the feds know I downloaded "call of duty 2" from the inturwebs. Not that I did of course.

I know it seems crazy and in fact it is. The only problem is that, by being specialized in the legal and technical aspects of data retention, I know how valuable communications traffic data are. Although I am not doing anything wrong, I don't want ISP's to store my communications data or telco's to store my location data, for whatever possible purpose.

I still believe that the best way to avoid problems is to protect your personal information as good as possible. That way, there is no identifiable data that can be used against you.

[purehate]

With a handle like cokeman I would be paranoid too.

[imported_spankdidly]

With a handle like cokeman I would be paranoid too.

*Sniff Sniff* I got a c0ol,d maans, thatss'd its jussst a fricikn coold,man.

[The_Denv]

With a handle like cokeman I would be paranoid too.

Yeh I noticed his name and was wondering when someone would bring that up LOL!

CokeMan: Your right about the European ISPs recording the packets...but...Could you imagine scrummaging through 24hours of just YOUR network traffic/packets? It would take about a month if your traffic is heavy, maybe more.

Even though it is true about the ISPs over here, Im not afraid and I dont care either because they do not have the manpower or technology to analyze every packet of every single computer in Europe. Its just not possible. [Or should I say it IS possible, but IMpossible to get the money to do such a thing]

Although, if they recorded it, stored it and then used it 'once' given a date/time of illegal events they could catch you. Still, you need skills to analyze packets, skills cost money. You'd need to hire a lot of highly paid packet analyzers to do that amount of work.

[Archangel-Amael]

Yeh I noticed his name and was wondering when someone would bring that up LOL!

CokeMan: Your right about the European ISPs recording the packets...but...Could you imagine scrummaging through 24hours of just YOUR network traffic/packets? It would take about a month if your traffic is heavy, maybe more.

Or they could set the filters to "look" for certain strings "key words" if you will and this could in turn "raise the alarms"
Just like using filters in wireshark. Still it would take considerable manpower in order to sort through what is caught. Just like with phone systems certain words are picked up and then a person analyses the data, and the rest is stored somewhere for later retrieval if needed.

[streaker69]

I know it seems crazy and in fact it is. The only problem is that, by being specialized in the legal and technical aspects of data retention, I know how valuable communications traffic data are. Although I am not doing anything wrong, I don't want ISP's to store my communications data or telco's to store my location data, for whatever possible purpose.

I still believe that the best way to avoid problems is to protect your personal information as good as possible. That way, there is no identifiable data that can be used against you.

If you're really that paranoid, then maybe you should find a nice cabin in the woods and write manifesto's on a manual typewriter.

[imported_spankdidly]

If you're really that paranoid, then maybe you should find a nice cabin in the woods and write manifesto's on a manual typewriter.

Get a cabin in the woods with a lot of ammo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Ridge

[C°KéM@ñ]

I know that retaining traffic data is a serious undertaking and it requires petabytes of storage space. However, the recent EU data retention directive obliges every ISP to retain almost all communications data. So the retention is not limited to entries that contain certain words (no such filter is applied) (see art. 5 EC Data Retention Directive).

I am also aware of the fact that it is extremely difficult to process petabytes of data, but currently EU ISP's are making huge investments in their infrastructure and personnel, in order to make sure that they can respond without undue delay to law enforcement agencies requests.
In the framework of my thesis, which deals on the issue of data retention directive, I have seen documents and examples of what ISP's can do with huge amounts of data. I have also seen how retained data can be used in cases of alleged copyright infringements. Not that I violate copyright but, the mere fact that these data can be used for all sorts of purposes, makes me a bit more aware of the importance of anonimity on the net.