I have just realized that sitemeter has the following data published about my visit, in a searchable and browsable format:
Searchable my behind! I looked into what it would take to use this to, for example, unmask Clippy, and it was less usable than the marginal next-best strategy.
(JoshuaZ) I'm also curious why you would be interested in promoting the unmasking of users.
I think you are more interested in avoiding the unmasking.
Anyway, you are right that sitemeter is not very convenient for this task, but the data is there. And unmasking is not the only possible application. Right now, it is publishing the fact that I looked at Quirrell's and JoshuaZ's user profile. And I might have just figured out Eliezer's current IP address. (Okay, maybe it was somebody else who tried to visit Eliezer's password-protected drafts page. Wait, is Eliezer writing a post?)
I have just realized that sitemeter has the following data published about my visit, in a searchable and browsable format:
en-us
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101203 Firefox/3.6.13 GTB7.1
I am not a privacy geek, but isn't this a bit too extensive? By the way, I am not from Etyek, Hungary, I am from Budapest, Hungary. Etyek is a very small village, so if sitemeter consistently identifies me as someone from Etyek, then it will be even easier to track my lesswrong browsing habits. It is very easy even without that.