Clearly, my biggest gripe with the forums and comment sections following stories on PennLive is how anonymity is seemingly encouraged by their system.

Disparaging, hateful, racist and homophobic comments are spewed across the screens of thousands of viewers by cowardly individuals who have what I like to call “message board bravado” or, teh internets version of “beer muscles”.

But just as we’ve known all along- anything one posts on teh internets is there forever.

And Floor9 explains it all in a brilliant post today-

This isn’t really news, but it might be a wakeup call to people who post comments — especially the trolls on PennLive.  When you post a comment, photo, video — really, anything — on a website, your IP address is logged.  What this means for the non-technical crowd is that someone with valid legal tools (such as a subpoena) can find out what you posted, even if you use a fake name and throwaway email address.