Or get a good sniffer program.
umm that wouldn't do anything. you would just see traffic between yourself and the board. in order for the sniffer to see what you want it would have to be running on the web server of the board
There is a way to find out the IP address of a member of a forum even when that forum's moderators are uncooperative, and it doesn't mean hacking the forum or anything like that.
I've done it recently to a member of a forum recently on accident and realized it afterward. Here's how.
I have my own website, which logs all http accesses. I used the forum's private message feature to send a message to the specific person, and inside the message embedded a picture hosted on my website. The address of the picture isn't revealed to anyone or posted anywhere else, just put in the PM.
Later check your website's logs for accesses of that picture file from ip addresses that don't belong to yourself. That would be the accesses from the forum user of whom you are gathering data for. (Or a nosy forum admin reading people's private messages)
In the log of your own website, filter down to that one picture filename, and it will tell you the date/time accessed, IP address, browser and OS type & version. You can look up the ip address on some websites to tell you the hostname and often approximate location (what city). Though that would do no good if the person is smart enough to be checking his/her PM's on their forum while signed into a proxy.
This is accurate.
There are other applications that do this as well.
But you have to be careful doing this, the authorities just might decide what you are doing is worse than what they did.
Everyone here is correct that without Admin access, you have no frontend way of finding that persons IP address. The above post is correct, as long as that person responds.
What can you do?
Calm down. Is what is said inaccurate? (provably) And more important does it cause harm? Can you specifically show where the comments cause financial harm?
The Authorities will not get involved whatsoever unless it can be specifically shown to cause harm beyond pissing you off. "Granny is a stupid bitch who doesn't take care of her kids" is a subjective statement that is not actionable. "Granny's grandaughter Susie told me that Granny has molested her and other kids" - this is actionable. It is specific, and can be proven to be inaccurate.
"Bob doesn't do a good job in his business, his laziness is hurting us" - subjective. "Bob stole $3000 from the till by forging a clients signature" - actionable.
