Which is absolutely irrelevant. This is info collecting at it's finest. Ppl get banned for this type of crap on other boards bc it's collecting personal info on someone that you have absolutely no right or reason to besides "I just like to know everything". That's complete bullshit and your reasoning makes you no better than a scammer "I just like to make more money". I pray to God nobody ever clicks on another one of your links again. You have the ability to go after real scammers yet you choose to use your abilities to spy on your fellow board members. What kind of example are you providing? What are you using the info and IP addresses for? Why the fuck do you think you have a right to do so? And to top it off you're the one always posting about internet security and how big brother is always watching us etc etc etc. You're infinitely lucky if Millard doesn't ban you for this crap, yes I'll be reporting this to him, bc had you done it on the board I mod on your have been banned instantly and been made aware to other boards.
I don't want to trivialize the concerns about or the significance of any form of systematic IP collection. I want to put it in perspective. It should be noted that his type of information is openly and routinely captured (and often stored for long periods of time) by practically ever single website we visit.
EVERY bodybuilding/AAS forum captures far more comprehensive IP data than PI could ever dream of doing. It's not necessarily due to any intentional or malicious effort by forum owners/administrators. But it's still massive data collection about member geographic location nonetheless.
I believe the default setting in the vbulletin forum app is to store IP data indefnitely or at least for a year or longer. (I could be wrong so please correct me if this is not the case.) The IP data is explictly connected to member usernames.
I know that a couple of years ago when I investigated the issue of IP logging in vbulletin, there were several years worth of IP data stored in the database. I immediately moved to purge all of this data and I alerted the members to this fact. I changed the settings to prevent future IP logging.
And this is about the best forum admins can do towards a policy of zero knowledge about member IP addresses (and geographic locations).
The current forum app captures IP addresses associated with registration and associated with the posts from the previous 24 hours. Then it is purged. Still, 24 hours worth of data is a lot. (My webhost logs 30 days of IP data before it is purge. The data on their end is not connected to any specific member username.)
Some forum admins will argue that storing IP data for long periods of time is extremely useful at detecting and eliminating scammers, spammers and problematic trolls. I can't disagree. I just think there should be a balance between this and member privacy. Personally, I think 24 hours of data is enough to do a decent job. When a forum is under heavy attack, then a longer period might be in order - maybe 7 days or even 30 days during sustained attacks.
This is MESO's disclosure. While PI's admission may be disconcerting, I would tend to be more concerned with the massive data that may be stored on the websites we visit.
