Can the 'Hosts' here view my IP address?

Maybe it is time to review a couple of pieces of information. The title of this thread is "Can the 'Hosts' here view my IP address?". People have given you links to the Apple Support Communities Terms of Use at least twice. (Third time's the charm?)

Have you read those terms? I'll quote an important part for you:

5. Breach of the Agreement

1. If you fail to abide by these terms Apple may remove your submission. Apple may also send an email that informs you that your Submission has been deleted or edited. Repeated inappropriate Submissions may result in your relevant account or accounts being placed into temporary or permanent suspension of your ability to participate in any or all of the areas on the Site.

2. If you post or send offensive or inappropriate content anywhere on or to the Site or otherwise engage in any disruptive behavior which Apple considers to be serious and/or repeated, Apple may use all available information about you to stop any further infringements. This may include informing relevant third parties such as your employer, school, Internet service provider, or law enforcement authorities of the infringement.

3. Apple reserves the right to delete any Submission, or take action against any account, at any time, for any reason.

You must have created your account with an Apple ID. What information did you provide when you created that account? I'm willing to bet that if Apple wanted to find you, they wouldn't need your IP address.

I don't know what your issue with ClamXAV is. I do know that you are completely wrong about it.

Apple places a high value on having a friendly, welcoming, and professional environment here on Apple Support Communities. If people step over the line, they will get posts edited or deleted. If you continue, and especially if you start going after the Apple hosts themselves, as you have done, they can and will kick you off entirely. They don't care if you have 48 points or 148,000 points. Apple only cares about the community as a whole.

Are your contributions assets or detriments to that community? That is not a rhetorical question, but it a question that Apple will answer for you.

I have no idea if they can personally see it; this is not a question to ask of other users as we would not know. You would need to get in touch with Apple. However, everyone knows that any website you visit can see certain info including your OS, etc.

Any website you visit has access to your IP address as its used to return any requests made to the website.

One can assume the forum software registers the IPs of every login to the website. Whether a host can personally see this directly at any given time is unknown, but if required I’m fairly sure your IP address can be obtained from the database with minimal effort.

What kind of "hard time" are you having?

If you're having difficulty accessing content in the app or iTunes store serving a country other than yours and you are attempting to use a VPN to circumvent the geographic restrictions, that's both a violation of the Terms of Use and potentially copyright law.

VPN services are often used by people with less than honest intentions in order to hide the source of their activities. The end-points for those VPN services often make it onto security blacklists, meaning you may have difficulty getting or maintaining a connection to many sites.

The variety of posts I have seen could fall under several criteria for deletion by the mods? Polling? Asking questions regarding other (non Apple products), disagreeing with any and all that post to your thread, trolling? Take your pick as to which criteria you think it falls under.

Using a VPN would in no way remotely have anything to do with post deletion.

Post deletion as has been explained has to do with your posts specifically. Whether or not they adhere to the rules and terms for these forums. Most of your recent ones have not really been adhering to the Terms.

The ones that have been adhering to them are still there.

how would YOU couch such a question so that the Moderators wouldn't rescind the query?

So you want to know how to run a poll without it looking like a poll? I simply wouldn't ask the question because the answer has no value.

HunterBD wrote:

I do confess, though, that I do not understand why one cannot ask what percentage of users of these community groups do or don't use an AV software programme.

okay, 23.7%.

FWIW, whatever the percentage it has absolutely no value.

How would anyone know?

Because there is no way to know. Polls are not allowed and the hosts are not Apple support. And, support would not know either unless they asked absolutely every user if they do or not.

Besides, who cares.

HunterBD wrote:

The penny had not dropped. Sorry. 😢

I do confess, though, that I do not understand why one cannot ask what percentage of users of these community groups do or don't use an AV software programme.

OK. That's it. Proof you're nothing more than a troll.

Goodbye.

HunterBD wrote:

I'm not wanting to be difficult .... but how do you know that percentage if no poll has ever been taken? 😕

I simply made it up, which has as much meaning as whatever the actual number might be. What I would like to know is the percentage of people who wish you would stop posting nonsensical questions. But polls are not allowed.

Using a VPN has nothing to do with that. Violating the Apple Support Communities Terms of Use does.

You should get an email explaining why your post was deleted.