Questionable Data Mining Concerns IRC Community

[LaoziSailor]

Questionable Data Mining Concerns IRC Community

"Two days ago an article on TechCrunch about IRSeeK revealed to the community that a service logs conversations of public IRC channels and put them into a public searchable database. What is especially shocking for the community is that the logging bots are very hard to identify. They have human-like nicks, connect via anonymous Tor nodes and authenticate as mIRC clients. IRSeeK never asked for permission and violates the privacy terms of networks and users. A lot of chatters were deeply disturbed finding themselves on the search engine in logs which could date back to 2005. As a result, Freenode, the largest FOSS IRC network in existence, immediately banned all tor connections while the community gathered and set up a public wiki page to share knowledge and news about IRSeeK. The demands are clear: remove all existing logs and stop covert operations in our channels and networks. Right now, the IRSeeK search is unavailable as there are talks talking place with Freenode Staff."

Source: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/02/1515247

[TheFoX]

Trouble is that anyone connecting to a channel can log all conversations regardless. I have logs of IRC conversations spanning the last three years or so. People must remember that what they write is public, so they should use caution when discussing something that is sensitive.

[Ænima]

Yeah, never tell people your IP address when your in IRC. Got it.