Dear Members,
On April 16, we announced a plan to display partial IP addresses of all posts made on or after Monday April 26, 2010.  The measure was introduced in order to provide our community with greater transparency with respect to posts on AGORACOM.  As a result of this new measure, members would be able to view other members who may be using the same IP address with just one click – and report any suspicious activity via the AGORACOM violations system.
MEMBER FEEDBACK – WE’RE LISTENING
Though the announcement received a lot of praise from members, we also received feedback in the form of concerns that a display of even a partial IP addresses may lead to privacy issues pertaining to location and or geography. Though we were confident that any such issues were remote, we remain true to our philosophy of building and upgrading AGORACOM on the feedback of our members.
As such, we came up with a solution that maintains the privacy AGORACOM members have come to enjoy, while still achieving the goal of easily viewing members that may share the same IP address.
CHANGES TO IP ADDRESS TRACKING
Given the fact that the primary purpose of the measure is to provide members with an ability to view other members who may be using the same IP address, we have revised the measure as follows:
- We will not display any part of the IP address within posts. No partial IP. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
- We will still provide one-click access to view members that share the same IP address
- The upgrade will be implemented for all posts made on or after Wednesday, April 28, 2010. Â It will not apply to posts made prior to April 28, 2010.
As a result of this new measure, members will still be able to view other members who may be using the exact same IP address with just one click – and report any suspicious activity via the AGORACOM violations system. Â At the same time, members do not have to worry about any part of their specific IP address being displayed to the public.
HOW IT WORKS – PRIVACY INTACT
We want to repeat that no part of a member’s IP addresses will be displayed, so there will be no change to the privacy of our members.  Rather, within each post, all members will be able to read a button that says “IP Check”.  The IP address of that post is tracked within the AGORACOM back-end, as it has been over the last couple of years, and will simply match members that are sharing the same IP address.
HOW IT WORKS – TRANSPARENCY
Members that are suspicious of a particular member’s posting will be able to click on “IP Check”. The AGORACOM system, which keeps track of the IP address in our back end, will automatically display any other members that share the same IP address. A match does not necessarily mean a violation has occurred but it will allow members to quickly and easily compare the posts of members sharing an IP address for potential multiple alias violations. If a member suspects a multiple alias violation, they can then easily report it via our “Report Violation” system.
We want to thank all of you for your great feedback and for continuing to make AGORACOM the best small-cap community on the web. Â We look forward to any questions and comments you may have pertaining to our new IP address upgrade.
Regards,
George, Paul et al
Hi, Stan and thanks for the comment. The system is working great. In your specific case, other people using the same IP does not in any way mean you are using multiple aliases. We are all very aware of the fact that different people can be on the same network.
What the checker does is allow others to check posting history of people sharing the same IP address. It would be clearly evident within a couple of minutes if the aliases were working together (concerted hyping, bashing, etc), or simply sharing the same IP and doing their own thing.
Hope this helps but don’t hesitate to ask for more support via “contact us”.
Regards,
George
I thought that this system was great until it was pointed out that I have been identified with 5 other posters as posting from the same IP address. I have never used another name to post here or any other forum and am concerned with the credibility of any posts made by myself or these other posters that this system has caused. It seems that we may have been branded as posting from the same IP address because we are using Telus air cards and the Agoracom system groups us as posting from the same location. I am hoping that Agoracom can come up with a solution for this condition and give a public acknowledgment of the situation.
Good work Agoracom! As a next step, perhaps would you consider a way of showing this pattern without violating privacy?
Multiple IP addresses from disparate regions within a short period of time (eg. IPs from Vancouver, Calgary, TO, etc) accessing the same account
For me, AGORACOM is already the best small-cap community in the world.
Thank you for all the efforts you do, to make available those important informations to retailers. I am sorry you now have troubles but I am convinced “the ducks will be in a row” soon again, as Canadians use to say.
All the best
This is an excellent compromise solution, which will acheive the needs of members, and also add transparency for AGORACOM internally.
Good business decision!
Dischino