Is lurking a healthy trend?

[Richard Prowse]

Originally Posted by David Powell

Lurk here, lurk here! When I lurked it was mostly because I had a Win98 machine that was extremely susceptible to virus attacks and ping attacks. If you posted anything on any forum, you gave away your IP address and if a hacker was also lurking you could get knocked off the web and they could cause your machine to crash or lock up. Various Windows defense programs started showing up and getting popular. All kinds of software firewalls, and various hacker attack programs that tried to out do them. So when I see someone who is using "Who is" and getting into all the web hacker jargon, such as "I'm in danger of giving up my lurker status" posting on a web forum and making hacker-like threats, I just kind of smile and go on about my business;- on a Mac.

If you have a Windoze machine, don't take offense. Just get Outpost Pro firewall program or use a router between your machine and the Internet. There are genuine people who read and do not post just because they are shy and then there are others that see web forums as some kind of online hacker game. It's better now because so many people are switching to DSL and usually that means a router, or they are on a wireless network and it is really hard to figure out where they are, as far as IP address.

David, this is serious. Please try and keep it silly.