As we really only care about the different AnonyMonks within a thread, the hash should be generated by something more like crypt( $sessionid.$ip.$nodeid , '42' );

And I do think it would be nice to have this.

I'd take IP out of it. Having the node ID, the session ID could only be a certain number of things that would hash properly from a valid IP. This would give a motivated person a fair chance at getting a network and possibly a geographic fix on a person. That's not very anonymous. The session and the node ID should be enough, as the session ID should be unique.

This would give a motivated person a fair chance at getting a network and possibly a geographic fix on a person.

I'm not a cryptographer, but I think that is practically impossible

Four pieces of information are used to calculate hash : salt, sessionid, ip, nodeid

The salt doesn't have to be shared

A fifth piece of secret information could also be used

Only the hash and nodeid are publically accessible information

The salt and the 5th piece can be rotated either randomly or periodically (every other week) --- good luck using crypt breaker on a moving target

And for the biggest shocker :) the hash doesn't even have to be shared! There doesn't even have to be a hash

The whole scheme could , instead of a dynamically computed hash, simply use a randomly assigned number, or color

For the sake of argument, even if it were possible to break crypt and get an IP address -- so what?

Where is the motivation? Perlmonks isn't used for commerce or political or criminal publishing, so where is the attraction to try and reverse engineer an IP out of this hash?

? Some random nefarious perlmonk wants to prove that X post by Anonymous Monk was really posted by mr_mischief, because the IP is the same? in same block? same IPS? So he can say AHA , GOTCHA!?

:D

As BrowserUk says, Gods here can and do use their privilege to see through anonymity sham -- and goverments don't even need to be Gods

So, ip , no ip, I don't think it makes a difference :)

OTOH, if this compromises personal anonymity -- lets us tie a particular AM post to a specific individual

How could it compromise personal anonymity?

Damned if I know, but that seems to be the chief objection thus far (as of writing this node, 20110909 05:41 EDT (US)).