Anonimity - Stafford Forum - my complete profile on internet search

[Tinkerbell]

My friend has just contacted me to 'have a laugh' at my use of 'Tinkerbell' on the Stafford Forum.

She typed in my real name on the internet search engine - I have got a wierd spelling surname - but on the search listings it came up with Tinkerbell's profile on www.staffordforum..... and gave my real name and listed how many posts I have made and allowed the user to click on them.

copied and pasted - how it came up on search ....

Stafford Forum / ProfileUsername: Tinkerbell; Title: Member; Real namegives my real name here); Location: Parkside ; Website: (Unknown); Birthday: July 19th 1972; E-mail: (Private). Messaging ...
(link to website)

When you click on it - the link goes straight to Stafford Forum where they can look at everything I have posted.

I was under the impression that Stafford Forum had total anonimity for their users.

 

[Glam]

Ty Tinkerbell,i've just removed my surname off here. Not that I care who knows it,but I agree with you,we should be annoymous x

 

[Tinkerbell]

ive just has a response from Admin who is on the ball - they have said its because I have given my real name in my profile page - people do need to be aware - dont put your real name in your own profile page if you do want to remain anonymous

 

[wmrcomputers]

I think the point here is that (like with any internet forum or messaging facility) we are as annonimous as we wish to be. If you are quite so bothered you could change your profile to say your real name is Tinker Bell! The only thing that needs to be real for the purpose of joining is your email address, and you can select that it remains hidden in any case.

 

[Admin]

Hi Tinkerbell,

I replied to your PM as soon as I could! You have put your full, real name in your profile, which is viewable by anyone (including Google), hence why all and sundry can see it!

Try clicking on anyone's name in any thread on The Forum and you will see their profile. Most people keep this as anonymous as possible, for example look at the profiles of Confused, db, John Marwood, zebidee, etc. (chosen at random).

If you wish to remain anonymous, simply click the Profile link in the yellow navigation bar at the top of the page and remove any info. that you don't want people to know.

If you remove your personal information from there, you should find that the links to Stafford Forum disappear from Google after a few days (I think - MyCult should be able to confirm this).

Thanks,

Admin.

 

[beermunster]

Thanks - ive just changed my name - I thought we had to give our real names in the profile page - so the main people who run the site know who we are.

Sadly, where I work they believe they own you inside and outside of the work place and if I agreed on something that wasnt politically correct I could land myself in hot water.

Ive changed my profile information, (and that of my other half) and hopefully the info will go off the search engine - if someone could clarify that I would be grateful.

 

[tek-monkey]

As said, you are as anonymous as you wish to be. Regardless of your profile I've been sussed out from my posts on here without actually using a name, just from a few brief mentions about work. On a forum you can be anything you want to be, the more honest a poster you are the smaller this anonymity becomes.

 

[Em L]

Regardless of your profile I've been sussed out from my posts on here without actually using a name, just from a few brief mentions about work.

Yes indeedy, I think I have sussed you out Sir I possibly have the same thing, especially as my user name is not as inventive as yours!

 

[tek-monkey]

Indeed, I have had my suspicions about you for a while too

 

[MyCult]

To confirm - when google crawls the individual members profile pages and updates the real-names to their pseudonym the profile pages will stop ranking for the real names.

Google isn't exactly quick at crawling forum profiles though - for reasons I won't go into here.

Until the profiles are re-crawled Google's cache of the page will be used & it will continue to rank for real names even if you've changed it.

If there are members who desperately want this sorting - change your name on the profile page then send me the URL's. I will get G to crawl them.

Send list all at once it doesn't matter how big the list is I just don't want 50 pm's each w/ one profile in it.

 

[prydemusic]

i am not sure about punbb but i know that with phpbb3 and SMF making your users profiles unreadable to non members via user permissions possible. I will have to research into that. Making sure search engines dont pick up profiles could easily be carried out by editing the robots.txt and excluding robots from reading profile.php would stop the direct linking to peoples profiles.
Just my quick two cent's as a fellow web developer.

 

[MyCult]

i am not sure about punbb but i know that with phpbb3 and SMF making your users profiles unreadable to non members via user permissions possible. I will have to research into that. Making sure search engines dont pick up profiles could easily be carried out by editing the robots.txt and excluding robots from reading profile.php would stop the direct linking to peoples profiles.
Just my quick two cent's as a fellow web developer.

Prydemusic is spot on that would stop the engines indexing profiles in the first place. It would eventually cause all profile pages in the index to be dropped too.