Many Internet surfers are fairly naive about the Internet and the ability of websites and servers to gather information. For the sake of clarity on this point the Cafe felt that it would be fair to describe our own practices in monitoring traffic to and from the Cafe.

The Cafe uses two independent software packages to monitor visitation to the Cafe. However, this type of monitoring does not reveal the identity of the visitor unless the visitor or the server discloses their identity. Companies usually disclose their identity through their own servers. Many Cafe visitors have disclosed their identity willingly, but still the vast majority of visitors remain anonymous and this is fine with the Cafe.

Internet Protocol (IP) is the method of directing Internet traffic or messages from the sender to the receiver whether this is by email or by surfing websites on the Internet. IP is assigned to an individual’s computer by the Internet Service Provider (ISP) to be its address on the Internet. IP can also be used to track Internet fraud and theft to its source. If you’ve watched “To Catch a Predator” on NBC TV, you have seen Chris Hansen repeatedly stand in front of sexual predators with a ream of paper reading Internet conversations between the perp and the prospective victim. In addition to these conversations, that ream of paper no doubt contains the IP history of the perp that can be used to determine the origin of the perp’s Internet access through an ISP.

Administrators of the Cafe spend two-three hours each every day, monitoring, editing, posting and writing for the Cafe. Because of the amount of time invested, we cannot help but notice certain highly repetitive patterns and behaviors of visitors. Of several hundred visitors, the Cafe has about 190 ‘hardcore’ mostly anonymous visitors that return to the Cafe repeatedly, some multiple times each day, some several times a week, and some more sporadically.

Recently one of our software packages was updated to allow us to tag a visitor’s IP number with a distinctive label that characterizes the visitor. In tagging close to 600 visitors, thus far, not once was the same IP number found to be shared by separate distinctive users that can be differentiated by other means. This allows our administrators to examine the variability of IP numbers in relation to specific individuals that also confirm the maintenance of their identity (with their static IP) by leaving comments with well practiced ‘handles’ and email addresses. We have noticed that for some ISPs like Charter Communications, Internet Protocol (numbers; sometimes referred to as a “dotted quad”) remains static and thus correlates with the individual user as long as some other confirmatory criteria can be found to verify this identity (browser, screen resolution, ‘handle’, email address, etc.). Other ISPs like AOL exhibit a truly dynamic IP allocation system in that every time a user clicks a new page, a new IP is assigned and characteristically these varying IP numbers reappear from time to time in use by the same individual. Dynamic IP addressing is managed by a computer server called a “dynamic host configuration protocol computer” that temporarily assigns an IP then changes it as new IP addressing is required. Basically this computing process allows sharing of a smaller number of IP addresses between larger numbers of separate Internet users within discretely separate segments of time.

Typical Example at the Cafe

From April through the end of July, using Microsoft Internet Explorer, this Cafe’er visited the Cafe frequently leaving >25 comments with a well-known ‘handle’. This Cafe’er uses Charter as an ISP routed from Willimantic CT. This ISP source assigns IP numbers 24.177.0.0 – 24.177.255.255. Both of our software packages recorded the IP 24.177.10.183 (dotted quad) during all Internet visits to the Cafe and with all comments posted by this individual. In early August, Charter-Willimantic assigned a new dotted quad (24.177.13.33) to this individual who then published >100 comments from August through January 2007. This dotted quad was subsequently recorded independently by our two software packages during each visit to the Cafe and with all comments. This individual, whose contributions to the Cafe have been greatly appreciated, is well known to the Cafe administrators. Thus, for this individual, two contiguous Charter dotted quads were used over the course 9 months, each for 4 and 5 months, respectively. The first dotted quad used between April and August 2006 has never been seen again by our software.

Visitors to the Cafe should be aware that visitor monitoring is possible for all visitations, transactions, and emails, whether the site is the Cafe, or any other blog, or “CPS.com”, or the town website, or the Stonebridge Press/Villager, or any business website, and of course any government website. Another fun feature of tracking entry into a site is the feature of knowing where the visitor came from. More often than not, the visitor has book-marked the Cafe so there is no website of origin. However, we often see that the visitor has found the Cafe in a Google search (have you ever read Google in French, Or Arabic?). Yes, we see visitors from around the world who search Google Images for a glimse of a Tasmanian Dragon, featured once in Pet of the Week or some naughty muslim in Bahrain seeking a glimse of Scarlet Johansson whose image was used in “Hollywood Comes to Woodstock”. The Cafe took down that article because we were getting too many visitors that just wanted to see the pictures. We also see visitors from other blogs, various state agencies, and occasionally Google, Inc itself. When the Cafe is discovered through a Google search, we get to see the actual strategy used as well as all of the other hits that were found in that search. Recently, we saw a strategy that was looking for novel bird-feeder designs, and found one of our articles published over a year ago (sorry Delpha).

We have never seen any of this revealed by other websites. Thus, we thought that it would be appropriate for the Cafe to let you know that anonymity on the Internet is more of a perception than a guarantee.