Maybe slightly off subject, but why do the majority of members to this site not have a viewable User Profile... Have you something to hide?
On a recent post most of us told everyone what we did.
Regards
John R
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John.
I know only slightly more about cars than I do about "Viewable User Profiles". What are they ? Are they a bit of information, about the list contributor, which the reader/viewer can access if the contributer wishes. If so, sounds alright to me.
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The options and details can be set up/amended in "My Profile" accessed from the right of the page.
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Whoops s/be "My settings"
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Whoops s/be "My settings"
When I click on 'My settings' I just get my email address and an opprtunity to change it or my password. Other people have a proper profile. How do I get to mine?
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When you click on "My settings" your "Account details" come up.
To the right of that header are two other menu headers "Forum options" and "My profile".
Update those and click on "Allow other users to view my profile"
HTH
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When you click on "My settings" your "Account details" come up. To the right of that header are two other menu headers "Forum options" and "My profile". Update those and click on "Allow other users to view my profile"
Got them, they are on top, not to the right. I can highlight text in the boxes, but it won't let me write anything.
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"I can highlight text in the boxes, but it won't let me write anything."
Don't know why not, I've just amended mine.
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John R,
You're right, it's something I noticed when I was moderating and now more so as a "punter".
Despite this new forum "tightening" up a little with registration I noticed many folks seemed to have created a one-off hotmail (or similar) account purely for site registration and chosen a username unrelated to their actual name.
I know this is the tradition of Interent forums but it is less easy sometimes if you are interested in who you might be responding to.
Added to this, and as you point out, many folks have their details (profile) hidden by default. I wonder if it is because folks want to stay hidden or that they just don't think to tick the box?
David W
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Plea: Guilty as charged.
Mitigation: I use a nom de guerre mainly for ethical reasons. If I quote an anecdote from my past it protects the individual involved. As for my email address this is a Yahoo one that was dormant on my system - the reason I don't use my primary e-mail is (a) it is my name and (b) as it turns out I didn't need to - but it was to avoid spam on my primary address. I am happy to confirm I never receive spam on my Yahoo address, so either Yahoo is very good at sorting spam or HJs website is clean (latter I think).
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John D,
you can view them (a very few of them) by clicking on the posters name, a little window pops up with some basic info regarding that person or says it cannot be viewed. If you have a pop up stopper in operation they will not appear at all.
Regards
John R
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why do the majority of members to this site not have a viewable User Profile... Have you something to hide?
Yes, my email address so that it doesn't get spammed. I subscribe to several newsgroups and before I introduced a spam filter, I was having to create a new email address on a regular basis. Out of habit that is why I chose to hide my profile here.
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I fully understand your point about Spam etc. but you can put some basic info in the profile without revieling your e-mail address.
Regards
John R
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John R,
Why the interest?
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Whilst it has not happened to me a friend of mine has been the subject of identity theft and it has caused endless problems and he will probably never get credit again in his life. For this reason I am extremely cautious about anything I post on the internet.
When I see these home pages that have photos and biographies etc. I just cringe.
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Despite having my address on the site for ages, I have to say I haven't had any spam (although this will probably change now). The off-site e-mails I've had have been useful, or 'thank-yous' for information. Maybe this is just a 'well behaved' site!
It strikes me that if you want spam use web-based e-mail. I also have a Hotmail address and over a couple of weeks it collects about 90 -100 mails (about half end up caught by the junk filter) offering me porn, credit and enhancement to my anatomy. It does seem these web based e-mails are more susceptible to spam.
Regards
John S
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What happens is that search engines akin to google etc. trawl through sites collecting email addresses from web pages. That way one can amass thousands of email addresses to spam to.
It's not hard to write a program to dig through every page on a site looking for email addresses. However, for the dig program to work it needs the following:
- a starting domain for the site.
(it can get this from registration sites, search engines etc. Normally when one submits a site to search engines that is what one is doing - letting the search engine know that your domain is alive)
- a set of pages that can be followed from the home page.
(any page that can't be accessed by following links can't be found by the dig program. So if you need to log in to access your profile with email address etc. the digger won't get to this info. Also some pages open with scripting on the client side rather than html links. I may be wrong but I doubt that a digger will follow these links.)
- a way of recognising an email address.
( the simplest is to find all "mailto: someaddress@domain" tags. There are ways of scripting email tags instead of using mailto: to try to get around this kind of thing too.)
Now on this site your email address is never shown on pages as valid email link unless you turn it on in your profile, and even if you do that yoru profile is opened as a popup window so is unlikely to be followed anyway. By contrast, in the small print you will see that we have an email address : info@khoosys.net as a link. This particular address is now starting to pick up spam unfortunately so I may change it to something more related to this site. The only place that we use this address is on sites like this one - so the practice of digging sites for email addresses clearly goes on.
The problem is that spam only increases so that eventually the mail address becomes almost unusable. I have an old btinternet address which over 10 days of holiday collected over 600 spam mails. Only one mail in that lot was one for me personally!!! I think this account collected spam from subscribing to various developer mailing lists. It was not difficult for anyone to subscribe to this list and then get a list of all the members.
One of the worst things to do with spam is to press the "remove me from this list" - if the email looks like it came from a dubious place. What some of these folk do is to use that reply to verify that the email address really is valid - a bit like this site account verification. Then they have a cleaner list of emails to sell to other spammers.
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Stephen Khoo
www.khoosys.net
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Steven Khoo:
Thank you for that "inside" technical info. You should publicise this at the point of registration so that people feel more confident about writing up their profile on this site.
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I noticed the same thing. My girlfriend's email is her name@hotmail, and she has been absolutely swamped with junk mail. Yet my own email is just random letters and numbers@my isp address and i've never had a single bit of junkmail.
In answer to the original thread question, I'm happy to put my name and initial, but not my email address. Not only is Big Brother keen to spy on us, but there ARE nutters out there too.
Dom F
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Dave,
When I communicate with people face to face I like to be able to look them in the eye, it helps me guage not only what the other person is saying but on a deeper level what they actually mean. I talk to many people on the phone (it's the nature of my job) and although I cannot see them I can guage (sometimes wrongly) their feelings/attitude through their voice.
However through the internet anybody can be anyone they want, they can assume a false persona or identity at will. The User Profile (you could put a loads of cods wallop in it if you wished) just gives me a quick "feel for" whom I'm communicating with.
Thommo,
I understand your concerns regarding illegaly copied identities, but this type of thing has been going on for years and years before the internet or even the telephone. As there are no credit details and I don't think any of us would post too much personal information on their profile, as I said above it gives us an idea of person posting.
Regards
John R
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John R,
Being such a sad git (me, not you) I didn't think it was worth filling in :o)
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Dynamic Dave ©
Just don't expect anything too interesting in mine... :-)
Regards
John R
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>> why do the majority of members to this site not have a >> viewable User Profile... Have you something to hide? Yes, my email address so that it doesn't get spammed. I subscribe to several newsgroups and before I introduced a spam filter, I was having to create a new email address on a regular basis. Out of habit that is why I chose to hide my profile here.
In "My Settings->My Profile" there is an option set to hide your email address in your profile:
"Display my email address in my profile" - turned off.
OK? We did realise that some folk are wary of having their email address appear on a public site
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Stephen Khoo
www.khoosys.net
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I'm not so convinced by the spam argument. For the past year my mail address has been freely available here, on two other single make car forums and a photographic site plus my mail address is published monthly in a car club magazine with a circulation of thousands etc etc.......and I have never received what I understand is meant by spam.
Ok I've had the odd virus delivered and of course Mr Umbhago mails me a couple of times a year to offer a share of his millions stuck in Nigeria if I'll just give him my bank details.....but nothing excessive or sinister.
For me making my mail address available has gained so much in the way of contacts, information and favours that hiding it would have been an overall loss.
PS. The above doesn't mean I need a demonstration of spam...thanks ;-)
David W
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Like you Dave my e mail address has been widely used in newsgroups, bb profiles and to use e commerce with reasonably reputable companies in UK, US and France. Next to no spam, advertising aplenty from the companies concerned but nothing odd.
My theory is that a lot of bulk spammers use software to create e mail addresses along the lines of forname.surname@isp.com. As my isp lets me create my own domain, few if any of these find it.
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Maybe it's just that we're technically paranoid?
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Or possibly technically pathetic.....because that went in the wrong place for a start!
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Well I'm honest about my identity!
--
Parp, Parp!
Note: All Toad posts come with an implied smiley.
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Why do you want to know more about us if it is important most peopl would be willing in believe to help the problem is that although this site maynot yet be used for gathering email address for junk emailing it may be at any time. The idea that we have something to hide i don't understand, what do people have to hide on this site do you think we would admit to steeling cars to order? Do you want us to tell us what our day jobs are? Another reason for not posting details about yourself for others is that with the internet we have the ability using just a few details about someone to find out where you live your phone number etc what whould happen is someone wanted to ruin your life for whatever reason by not posting your details they have less chance of doing this. Anyway I think I am beginning to ramble it must be the combination of a boring job and lack of sleep.
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Edd,
When I asked if people had things to hide, it was asked with (to steal Toads phrase) an implied winking smiley. I don't think specialist car theives or other assorted toerags would be bothered chatting to the likes of us.
As has been pointed out in this thread (a few times) you can show your profile but hide your e-mail address.
If the HJ Website was going to be used to collect e-mail addresses it would collect them from the registration info, not from your viewable profile...
As for seeing what people who contribute to this site do for a living, see "Life outside the forum" started by Vin on 25 Aug 02 and had 102 replies.
www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?f=2&t=65...2
Regards
John R
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Being retired I have nothing much to hide and even less to tell!
Tomo
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Damnit, now have an "open profile" written within my wn constranits.
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Maybe slightly off subject, but why do the majority of members to this site not have a viewable User Profile... Have you something to hide? On a recent post most of us told everyone what we did. Regards John R
Me and my gasteropod mates like to keep our heads down, and retreat back into our respective shells if we think we might be about to attract attention !!
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you publically show me the names of the council officers responsible for roads and transport
and the names of the planners and civil engineeering contractors they use, and the lead engineers by name
and the names of the traffic police department
then i will be a little bit more open about my name
as it is im perfectly well aware of how to really hide my ID, but havnt bothered, and it would take any young grad at GCHQ 2 minutes to track me down
I actually think a little bit of anonimity frees up the debate a little, and certainly encourages input from say coppers who arnt 100 % the party line
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I agree with those who say that it helps to have an idea who you are 'talking' to when you respond to a posting.
Personal details are also useful in other respects. For example, one of you is in a car-related business that I thought might be of mutual benefit regarding my custom, but the withholding of personal details was sufficient to put me off the idea.
In another case, a classic car was offered for sale and I wondered if it was in my locality, in which case I would 'put the word around' amongst my enthusiast friends, but again no e-mail address was given so I decided not to bother.
So far as I can see, it is only a persecution complex or an embarrassment about personal details that stops some basic details being given. I can't see any downside at all, though I could understand if someone prefers not to publicise their e-mail address (though mine is all over the planet and I get no spam e-mails apart from the odd Nigerian fortune-seeker).
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>>I get no spam e-mails apart from the odd Nigerian fortune-seeker.
And he said I was the only one he'd contacted, now I'm definately not having anything to do with the DuDu Mining Co funds.
David W
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I think I've had three so far, by e-mail and snail mail.
Mostly with my name mis-quoted.
I'm waiting for them to phone up next!
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as it is im perfectly well aware of how to really hide my ID, but havnt bothered, and it would take any young grad at GCHQ 2 minutes to track me down
If you do really know how to hide your ID (it is easy to get a completely false ID) and if you log on from non-traceable locations (i.e. you have no connection with the location, for example, internet-cafes), then GCHQ or FBI for that matter cannot trace you.
On a general point, wrt others who have escaped spammers so far, consider yourself fortunate. If your name ends up on spam list, it can be a real pain.
Incidentally, it is possible to send e-mails using a "bogus" or "cloned" senders name without being traced to the sending PC. I shall refrain from posting details here. No doubt, those of you interested in these activities will search the web to find out how.
Finally, remember that this site is safe from spammers for the reasons mentioned by S Khoo above.
<0.1%
PS: All my posts come a really useful message.
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PS: All my posts come a really useful message.
Useful, eh, what??! :-)
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As stated elsewhere in this thread I can't access 'my settings' and although I have heard 'profiles' mentioned have been unable to find or access any. Can anyone help !!!
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Top of the right hand column of the screen, under 'The Back Room' heading, and just above 'News'
lists:
User name
Log out
My settings
New account
Help
or at least it does on my screen. I guess you found 'new account' to be able to post here?
Regards
John S
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Backroom Contents page
Top right- click 'my settings'
Log in
Click on 'My Profile Tab and add or amend as required then click the appropriate button to save any changes.
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Volvoman,
I don't knwo why this woudl be happening. If you can describe it in an e-mail to me, I will see what I can do.
Alternatively, e-mail me what you want your profile to say (e-mail address, person interests, real name etc.) and I'll efit it over the weekend sometime.
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Thanks for the feedback guys and sorry for not being clearer. I can see the 'my settings' tab but when I click on it nothing happens. The 'log in' (obviously) and 'new account' tabs work fine. What's going on ??? Doesn't anyone want to know who I am ?????
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It could be a cookie problem with your browser. If you have your setting high it will prevent you accessing your settings. If you are running firewall software on your PC you will need to look at your privacy settings there as well.
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Thanks for the feedback guys and sorry for not being clearer. I can see the 'my settings' tab but when I click on it nothing happens. The 'log in' (obviously) and 'new account' tabs work fine. What's going on ??? Doesn't anyone want to know who I am ?????
First log in; try and see if the settings works after that.
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PS: All my posts come an implied profile.
Stu.
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