From: Ziana Astralos (ziana@extrotech.net)
Date: Sun Jul 06 2003 - 19:13:54 MDT
Quoting Dossy <dossy@panoptic.com>:
> Let me clear up a bit of misinformation ...
>
> > On 2003.07.06, Extropian Agroforestry Ventures Inc. <megao@sasktel.net>
> > wrote:
> > > Along the way I have captured a list of visitors to my site that
> > > includes the IP address and hostname. Can these be translated into a
> > > link to email the original sender?
> On 2003.07.06, Ziana Astralos <ziana@extrotech.net> wrote:
> > A user's email address is not in any way linked with their IP address
> > and/or the hostname that IP resolves to.
>
> Actually, the answer is "yes, but it's not easy and it's not cheap."
> ...
> Someone got smart along the way and said, "Hey, we could tag people's
> browsers with cookies and other tracking nonsense and then wait for them
> to self-identify (at an e-commerce site, for example) then correlate
> them back to the rest of their data ..."
> ...
What I said is not misinformation, I was simply answering the question that
he asked originally. You cannot 'translate the IP address and hostname into
a link to email the original sender'. You *can* use tracking cookies and all
that mess to accomplish something similar in effect, with the corresponding
increase in cost and complication, but even that isn't consistent (a number
of people do use cookie-blocking programs, and there are options integrated
in IE and Opera -- and probably Netscape too, now -- to reject cookies on a
site-by-site basis). The IP address plays no or very little part in the use
of cookies in this manner, however. Perhaps I was taking his question a bit
too literally, but I didn't think such a cookie-database-tracking solution,
particularly due to the 'it's not cheap' part, was what he was looking for.
-- Aumentar! Onward, Ziana Astralos - ziana@extrotech.net - http://www.extrotech.net/ GCS/MC/IT/L/O d- s-:- a? C++++ W+++ K++ UL w+ M-- PS+++ PE Y+ DI++++
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