Re: PPRuNe Security...
It might be easier then most people think in certain parts of the world to gather your ip address.
Firstly, gathering the ip address in real time is possible. It is an extension of the corporate issue that hoofie raised.
In some countries ISPs are bound by law or governement directive to monitor all internet traffic. This enables them to either block or report on access to certain sites - eg pornography or subversive - depending on where in the world you are. For instance China blocks a lot "free speech" sites, certain other Asian countries try to block pornography. The technical means to do this vary from going through unseen proxies to hardware router filters, but rest assured logs can be made and kept. Somebody at an isp could knock up a simple script to log all accesses to Pprune and where they came from, match the time with a poster and you're home dry. Of course, Pprune is probably a very small fish in the big internet ocean unleass you have really p*ssed off someone with a lot of clout.
The other thing is that it might not take a court order to get Danny (or at least Pprune) to divulge all sorts of information. Remember the group of paedophiles that were caught when the server that held their records was hacked? Pprune holds various bits of information about us and if the server holding that is hacked, then again home and dry. (I should point out that I am in no way knocking Danny's security, but he is totally dependant on his hosting company and their secuity.)
There again why go to all that trouble. Just bribe someone (not necessarily a mod) with access to the system - eg someone at the hosting company. Remember all the hoo hah when it emerged that poor Indian call centre operators where making a bit on the side by selling UK customers banking details?
I wouldn't recommend an anonymous proxy. Too many of them are honey traps, desinged to make money one way or another!