What kind of technique does use Google Plus to generate users' unique ids?
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https://plus.google.com/102766325060234825733/posts
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how about this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/105034/how-to-create-a-guid-uuid-in-javascript – zinking Jun 25 '12 at 02:54
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You can only assume that they are randomly generated ID's that are large enough to be generated non-sequentially with sufficient entropy.
The ID's are too big to be stored in a bigint field which is interesting, again probably due to the required entropy and non-sequential requirement (so that nothing can be inferred by comparing userid's).
Richard EB
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A simple encryption of a serially generated number, with a secret key can be used to generate the IDs. It can be a 1 way hash, or a decryptable encryption. The reason for not using serial numbers directly is obvious: You can easily guess userids of other users on the network, which can result in Bots scraping the content of the network.
user1085685
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1You are assuming that the ID has been encrypted, how do you know this is the case? It may not be encrypted or obfuscated at all. – Richard EB Aug 09 '12 at 11:08