[SWLUG] irc question

[Dave Cridland [Home]]

On Sat, 21 Dec 2002 22:59:10 +0000
bascule <asura at theexcession.co.uk> wrote:

> when i use irc, i'm only an occasional user, i'm shown as joining the channel 
> as 'bascule at somentlstuff even if the nickname i use is something else
> 
> apart from creating a new user and launching the irc client as that user how 
> might i alter how i'm identified to the server, i don't care about the ntl 
> identifier (that relates to my firewall i presume) but the 'bascule' bit that 
> gives away my local user name
> 
> i use ksirc,

I'm not massively familiar with ksirc, but the normal IRC daemons pick up your username (as opposed to your nickname) via two methods, in this order:

1) They use identd. (Which is generally regarded as a security risk, and pretty much useless anyway, so disable that if it's running and you don't *know* you need it.)
2) They use whatever ksirc told it to use. It's been a while since I mucked about with the IRC protocol, but I seem to recall you tell it the username and hostname to use anyway.

Now, I now that in xchat, which is these days my IRC client of choice for no good reason, you can just specify all this information. I'd assume that it's all there in ksirc too... Although a quick skim of the manual doesn't tell me where it might be found.

In my experience, which is probably not as large as others, most people seem to IRC from their normal user. A few IRC from "irc" accounts they've created for that purpose, and a few IRC using what appear to be made up users, but these latter are rare and generally speak Italian, Polish, or else fail to understand fundamental differences between letters and digits.

Of course, most regular IRC users I bump into have sensible firewalls - IRC does attract an awful lot of port scans and such. (Although I got my first scan within 5 minutes of bringing up my new ADSL line, without using IRC at all from it yet.)

Dave.