Are IP addresses on comment notices always correct?
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I’ve had a number of comments come in from one IP address, and they have been accompanied by four different names. Since its a healthcare site I suspect it is one person trying to maximize his effect by making it look like four different people. However, I don’t want to rule out that the IP tracking could be in error. Are the IP addresses always correct?
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Yes, they are correct, but they are NOT unique identifiers. This is one of the great myths of the internet. AOL has a block of IPs, lots of proxies have blocks of IPs so it frequently looks like everyone using that service is in the same place. It’s not necessarily true.
What I did when hit with a similar situation (all pro-Scientology comments, all posted within a very short time and tracing to the same IP) was that I edited each of the comments to show the IP right in the comment and then made a comment myself about how odd it was that they all had the same IP. That doesn’t rule out that they could be different people, but it does cast some doubt.
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I can understand how that might be with email, but when they log on to my blog and wordpress sends me a notice, is it still going through yahoo and thus picking up the same IP?
For example, here’s four that seem also to include the county and state.
8:52 Author *: Stewie (IP: 65.219.110.180 , fw.co.marquette.wi.us)
8:56 Author *: Squiggy (IP: 65.219.110.180 , fw.co.marquette.wi.us)
8:56 Author *: Tom (IP: 65.219.110.180 , fw.co.marquette.wi.us)
12:00 Author*: James Madison (IP: 65.219.110.180 , fw.co.marquette.wi.us)Can I safely say these are the same people?
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IP addresses are network interfaces, not people. It’s common for many people who work in the one office to share a single IP address. (There are even some countries where the entire population shares a handful of IP addresses).
You can’t draw any conclusion except to say those comments all came from the same network.
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Pretty much, yes. There’s nothing in the IP address that will prove anything either way.
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Bummer. So when you mark it as spam you are excluding perhaps all the people on that network, or only when that IP address comes in?
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Marking a comment as spam won’t harm other people with the same IP or on the same network. Akismet is smarter than that.
You can un-spam any comment poster by approving their comments – that will teach Akismet to regard them as ok.
If you want to deliberately block an IP address you can put it in your Comment Blacklist on the Settings / Discussion tab.
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