> IRC never held a particular promise of "privacy" True, like almost all nice network protocols and implementations in heavy use of the 90s (NNTP/Usenet, Mail,

> IRC never held a particular promise of "privacy" True, like almost all nice network protocols and implementations in heavy use of the 90s (NNTP/Usenet, Mail, IRC amongst others) no one did foresee the privacy/spam wave that hit us when the internet became famous. I remember in Europes most used IRC network at that time - IRCnet - it was mandatory to run an identd server that would tell the user of the logged in system to the IRC server, and it would display it to all users (along with the IP address of course). Imagine such requirements today...