Peanut Gallery Commentary on the Staff Log of Bannings and such like.

[Jenny A]

Well I for one, am too stupid to know what a proxy is let alone know how to use one.

Suppose you wanted to send a letter by snail mail without revealing the city you sent it from. You could mail the letter to a friend or agent in another city and have them post it for you. That's roughly how IP proxies work but without the bother of having to find a real person to mail the letter.

There are lots of good reasons for attempting to be anonymous on the web. You could be posting from a state where just being an atheist or just posting outside the country is illegal. You could be hiding from a determined stalker. You might just prefer to be private. And there are non legitimate reasons like disguising yourself in order to return to a site you have been banned from, or to have two accounts on the same forum.

We don't prohibit the use of proxies. However, if you behave like a sock and use a proxy, you are likely to be asked why. If, as is the case with Janice_Spokes, your answer is obviously a lie and you reveal in your answer that you were lying about where you live, yep, using a proxy can identify you as both a troll and a sock.