Some people are under the mistaken impression that the Identification Protocol as described in RFC 1413 is a reliable and secure method of getting the remote user's information.
This service is often required by IRC servers. Many IRC servers, notably a large portion of EFNet servers, refuse to allow a client to use their services without this.
Unfortunately, the only time this protocol is reliable is when the client is a system managed by someone that does not have full administrative control of it. This supposition is not true for most of the IRC clients, as they connect from desktop systems.
Many servers also refuse to accept the anonymized replies some ident daemons provide. Therefore, here's a small example of an ident daemon that circumvents this while still protecting your privacy, satisfying the paranoid misunderstanding of IRC operators, and preventing identd-based portscans from succeeding.