>>>> (Mercifully, it's virtually impossible to determine who an IP 
>>>> address belongs to...)
>>>  Why would that be?
>>
>> ...because every minute of every hour, hundreds of thousands of people 
>> connect to a given ISP and get assigned new IP addresses purely at 
>> random?
> 
> Except they know the telephone number you're connecting from, unless you 
> hide it and then some won't let you connect.

This still doesn't explain who the ISP is supposed to keep track of 
several thousand computers all concurrently using their system.

> Check various communications laws, there's normally a bunch of provisos 
> about providing information. How do you think the police get hold of 
> telephone records?

OK, so they give the *police* that information. They're not going to 
give it to anybody else, are they? :-P

>> Again, how do they get their hands on cookies for a different domain?
> 
> Check your stats pages you might see a referrer address so they know 
> where you came from, they then track you through their site. Now look 
> closely at the results google presents say for "test"
> 
> The first result is "Test.com Web Based Testing Software" hover over it 
> and it'll take you to www.test.com right? Wrong! Pull up the properties 
> of the link and you'll see it's going to 
>
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.test.com%2F&ei=Bag2S
> 
> They know where you came from, what you were doing on their site, and 
> where you left for.

OK, so they know I came from Google. They still don't know what I 
searched for. :-P

>> (Also, what do you mean "sign up to Google"?)
> 
> For personalised info on iGoogle, you got Gmail?

...wuh?

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