How about making this forum "private"? - My Tiny Dick Forum

hoverfly · 09-12-2011, 11:17 AM

May I again request that the whole forum be made 'private'? I know, the pic/vid section has been private for a while but personally, I don't think that that's sufficient.

Google can happily read all your posts and algorithms are smart enough to analyse usernames and references made to other nicks used outside this forum for them to be able to build up a nice database of who and what you are or claim to be.

As I said in another post, I do co-run a doc forum as admin and it is easy enough to set 'Guest' account priviliges to be able to only see the content of the forum, yet deny access to the posts content, which is what I'd be keen on.

You still get almost the same exposure on google, if that is what you are after, building up your membership numbers, but at least what people feel is private, stays private, unless of course you forget to assign bots to the 'Guest' priviliges ruleset.

I don't know how often google comes by here but I know for a fact that on our site, google pretty much reads every post in realtime, allthough it only gets as far as the post title.

Also, are member profiles visible to bots? This, if it was the case, should also be dealt with, unless it was when the forum was set up.

Just my two cents worth on privacy.

09-12-2011, 11:17 AM	#1
hoverfly Tiny Dick Extraordinaire Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: East of England Posts: 1,567	May I again request that the whole forum be made 'private'? I know, the pic/vid section has been private for a while but personally, I don't think that that's sufficient. Google can happily read all your posts and algorithms are smart enough to analyse usernames and references made to other nicks used outside this forum for them to be able to build up a nice database of who and what you are or claim to be. As I said in another post, I do co-run a doc forum as admin and it is easy enough to set 'Guest' account priviliges to be able to only see the content of the forum, yet deny access to the posts content, which is what I'd be keen on. You still get almost the same exposure on google, if that is what you are after, building up your membership numbers, but at least what people feel is private, stays private, unless of course you forget to assign bots to the 'Guest' priviliges ruleset. I don't know how often google comes by here but I know for a fact that on our site, google pretty much reads every post in realtime, allthough it only gets as far as the post title. Also, are member profiles visible to bots? This, if it was the case, should also be dealt with, unless it was when the forum was set up. Just my two cents worth on privacy.