- Essjay - wrote:
This has been my experience on en.wikipedia, as well as what we (the users) are told when we complain about AOL. It is certainly the case that within seconds of blocking an IP, a legit user is affected, while the exact same vandal is mysteriously on a new IP continuing his vandal spree. It seems awfully coincidental to me that the vandal would be able to get onto a new IP within seconds of the old one being blocked (I've had dialup, and I was never able to disconnect and reconnect in a matter of seconds) while at the exact same time a Wikipeida contributor dials in and is assigned the IP the vandal was using, as opposed to some non-Wikipedian being assigned it.
Perhaps I'm completely wrong; I only know what a lot of vandalfighting has taught me, along with what I've been told by people who are supposed to know what they are talking about.
The proxy IP changes on every request, not the client IP. The client IP is stable throughout the PPP session. The site I linked to in my previous post contains a discussion of the difference between the two.
We can in fact determine the AOL client IP using a Java applet or ActiveX control. I once floated the idea of serving Java applets to AOL users, but it met with a cold reception, for usability reasons. And of course the results returned by an applet running on the client could be spoofed.
Maybe we could use an SSL web bug or redirect script. I imagine SSL requests wouldn't be proxied.
-- Tim Starling