Previous owners lied about works done - just found out!

a difficult situation, but probably the best option, unless you can recommend a better one? Obviously I did not suggest using false paperwork!

anyone can track you to your ISP and within a limited area. To get name or house number would require ISP's cooperation, but they can be very cooperative.

As you say, although not difficult, its unlikely.

NT

Then use DIYbanter.

Yup. A couple of Acrows could be considered a 'feature'.

And neither did I. The paperwork is genuine, whether the facts in it are true is yet to be seen.

I agree, however I'd like to know one thing: By putting in an RSJ this would presumably have to comply with building regs - how would this affect the rest of the conversion? Would I have to upgrade everything to comply - eg fire doors etc or would the RSJ been seen as an independant modification?

Earl

I hate saying this on a DIY group, but get an expert in. A structural engineer would be the best bet, and unless something is very iffy I doubt he'd report you to the council.

How about electric cabers holding the place up?

Good repost. Now explain it.

It seems pretty obvious to me, Dave. He's obsessed with anything that involves tossing.....

Which makes it much quicker and easier since it stamps all messages with the originating IP address.

Use it through a few proxies if you are that worried...

OE does not make looking at the raw message quite as easy as most newsreaders, but a quick CTRL+U (show message source) in mozzila give us:

Path: ptn-nntp-reader04.plus.net!nntp-xref-master.plus.net!ptn-nntp-spool01.plus.net!ptn-nntp-spool02.plus.net!ptn-nntp-spool03.plus.net!nntp-peering.plus.net!ptn-nntp-feeder03.plus.net!solnet.ch!solnet.ch!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: "Set Square" Newsgroups: uk.d-i-y Subject: OT: Anonymity of posts - was: Previous owners lied about works done - Got them? Date: Sun, 12 Jun 2005 11:39:11 +0100 Lines: 29 Message-ID: References:

X-Trace: individual.net faBkxWQldmr+t9Go3KahgQKmGv3NRps8C5TABKFQyTWTMEwJvF X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1437 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1441 Xref: ptn-nntp-reader04.plus.net uk.d-i-y:125803

Which tells us your ISP plus other stuff like the software you are using. Some ISPs news gateways will add more information to the headers like the IP address posted from. So with help of Tiscali it would be simple enough to get your real identity.

A bit of data mining would probably turn up a fair bit of info as well but without any official involvement i.e. just collecting together all the various snippits of personal information that you may have divulged over the years in different posts.

As with all these things it is a case of knowing who you defending against. For keeping Joe User from knowing who you are, there is probabbly no need to do much given the chances are he won't want to know anyway. If however you wanted to keep your ID secure from the national security services you would have to work very hard indeed!.

With Pluto, I simply click on an arrow to get header details. Yours are below.

Path: news-text.dial.pipex.com!lnewshfeed01.lnd.ops.eu.uu.net!master.news.eu.uu.net!lnewsspool00.lnd.ops.eu.uu.net!lnewsinpeer00.lnd.ops.eu.uu.net!emea.uu.net!newsfeed01.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: "Set Square" Newsgroups: uk.d-i-y Subject: OT: Anonymity of posts - was: Previous owners lied about works done - Got them? Date: Sun, 12 Jun 2005 11:39:11 +0100 Lines: 29 Message-ID: References:

X-Trace: individual.net faBkxWQldmr+t9Go3KahgQKmGv3NRps8C5TABKFQyTWTMEwJvF X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1437 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1441 Xref: news-text.dial.pipex.com uk.d-i-y:501970

Of course, what it all means is totally beyond me.

Worst case scenario is that a new buyer moves in, structure collapses and kills someone, and neighbour is interviewed by Police and advises that you knew of the problem. I don't think it would be a problem getting authorisation in that case to trace your ip address.

ptn-nntp-reader04.plus.net!nntp-xref-master.plus.net!ptn-nntp-spool01.plus.n et!ptn-nntp-spool02.plus.net!ptn-nntp-spool03.plus.net!nntp-peering.plus.net !ptn-nntp-feeder03.plus.net!solnet.ch!solnet.ch!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!i ndividual.net!not-for-mail

Interesting! So it's not *too* easy for Joe Public to establish a poster's real identity without getting information from one's ISP - which they

FWIW, my ISP is *not* Tiscali - despite what the headers may lead you to believe.

The only things in your headers that reveal anything about you are the From: address which you set yourself, and the Message-ID: and X- Trace: which are set by news.individual.net and only meaningful to them (unless someone has bothered to crack the encryption that they use). Other NSPs may include different information, e.g. Google Groups includes the IP address from which a post originates. Presumably you mention Tiscali because it appears in References: but that refers to the posts you are following up, not your own. Other than that we can tell that your clock is set to BST and you're using Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1437, which doesn't really narrow things down very much :-) Even if someone has your IP address they can at best narrow it down to a rough geographical location, or cross-reference it with other communications (email, Usenet posts, locally hosted websites ...) unless the address "belongs" to you (i.e. the DNS records point to a company or personal domain rather than an ISP).

^ That's you

^ The References are the message IDs above yours in the thread to which you are replying, not you. Someone else was using Tiscali.

^ That's you too.

It's quite difficult to get a "real" identity, but quite easy to get someone's online identity, from which one may deduce facts about their real identity. For example, if you (in another newsgroup) had posted something about where you worked, that could be picked up.

However, you can almost always be tracked back through ISPs to the network logon-ID you are using, or to the phone line if you're using an

I think John Rumm slipped a line when he was reading, between Message-ID, Path and References.

Owain

In reality most ISPs roll over with very little provocation alas - some however have been know to put up a fight. (recent examples of the RIAA trying to identify people they think are violating copyright spring to mind)

Yup, sorry, just glanced at the refered articles which threaded to the OPs message that was posted from Tiscali - but you aren't the OP! You posted via indivadual.net, who would no doubt be able to relate your real identity to that of the post.

Many news server providers do not provide identifying information (IP, ...) but only an encrypted version of these, so essentially you can do nothing. For example, giganews.