And lo On Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:13:55 -0000, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did  
spake thusly:

>>>> 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?
>>  IPs are not given out at random.  Each ISP has a range that they are  
>> allowed to assign. The IP address can be tracked back to the ISP.
>
> Yes, I'm well aware of that. I meant they're assigned at random from the  
> pool of addresses belonging to that ISP.

That wouldn't make financial sense. LIFO means that if I've bought a batch  
of 100 numbers to use I can see I've never gone above address 50; so I can  
return or sell on say 25 to someone else. Think about buying every member  
of your 100-strong staff a licence for Software X, they all use it but  
you've only a maximum of 10 doing so at one time.

>> From there, depending what records the ISP keeps, they can probably  
>> tell what username was usign that IP at that time.
>
> This is the part that I doubt.

I'd echo Gail, but you've already answered her. To posit a non-national  
security/by law suggestion - Data Mining; especially if you haven't ticked  
that no third-party box. Been looking up recipies for avocados expect an  
email from the National Association of Avocardo Growers about local  
producers ;-)

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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