Had you taken the time to read the terms and conditions clearly outlined (see "By commenting on this article, you agree to follow these terms") before you posted a comment on this website, you would have seen a complete description of how "...The IP addresses of all those posting comments is recorded...". This is not an unusual thing for a website to do, and stores no personally identifiable information about you, unless you consider the state you may (or may not) live in to be such.

When two computers connect to share information over the internet, the IP address is the required piece of information that allows the two systems to send and receive information information from one another. An IP address can be spoofed using clever software, and certain web services (like AOL) provide people with a new IP address every time a new page is accessed. As such, it is not considered to a be a particularly reliable piece of information by itself, but in general can provide a good idea if information might have come from the same (unidentified) computer or network.

I built much of the back-end system that powers the Beacon's site, and the information gathered about users does not extend past the usual recording of ip addresses and similarly innocuous information used to gauge which pages and sections of the site are receiving the most traffic.

This is not 1984, I promise. If you are genuinely concerned about your online anonymity, please do a quick Google search for a TOR client, which will allow you to browse the net completely unidentifiably by using a complex network re-routing system. Do be aware the Google and other search engines will be recording similar information to what the Beacon captured about your visit.

-Adam