Sweet thanks, I'm still somewhat of a noob with privacy.
Okay, so if I dont log in for half a year, or a month with limited retention on, do those logs vanish? Since I see like 3 IP locations right now.
Also, so I see email addresses get kept indefinitely. Hmm... can't delete accounts, but looks like you can delete posts, even from long ago. Hmm.... Kinda suck to delete everything posted. I guess there is no way to de-associate the current email of mine to the profile in question?
I was retarded and shot myself in the head with that one. >_<
This is somewhat covered on the page:
Between 6 and 24 months, the IP linearly loses least-significant bits over time. For example, the IP 123.234.210.221 would lose 8 bits and become the prefix 123.234.210.0/24 approximately 10.5 months after it was logged. For IPv6, the least-significant 66 bits are dropped after 6 months, and then the remaining bits are dropped linearly over the 1.5-year period.
So, is a less technical way of explaining it, basically your IP address loses its uniqueness in the logs as time goes on. So, at the maximum amount of time specified (24 months) your IP is only partially recognisable when compared to the initial IP logged.
User's threat models will differ between them, however its always best to try, and mitigate for the worst case. If you've posted under a IP address that you haven't obfuscated in some way, then you could potentially consider making a new account, but taking the precautions that wouldn't reveal any data you think is sensitive. Obviously, that's less than ideal for a lot of users here, but it depends on how much you value your privacy, and just how much data you might have given out.
Unfortunately for you, if you haven't already opted into limited retention, the benefit of it is largely lost if you haven't been concealing your identity. To be honest, this is one of the reason's I'd like to see a newbie welcome screen which not only goes through rules, a questionnaire of some sort, but also explain these features, and optional opt ins at user registration.
