Is our information private?

[worldavi]

I am a little bit concerned about...I was checking my online presence with a google search and put my user name in....1st thing that pops up is a post I made on this forum....and even worse...when I clicked on it, it opened up my profile. And remember I was not logged into the site either. So I have to wonder ...WTF ?! Do the privacy settings or lack of .....allow this crap to happen?? This is not good....unless there is a setting that I am missing.....someone let me know. I am sure most of you dont want that happening either to your personnel information.

[paradiceau]

Leo,

I agree with you, seems like our profile information should be private.  I will message Alan A and ask him to look at this.

As far as claims go, look at the claims section on the members forum.  That should answer your questions.

Thanks for bringing this up.

Jeff

[worldavi]

Ok let me know what you find out. Also...advise when we can pay for our membership as I will keep mine active

[aarcher]

Sorry for the delay worlddavi on replying. I am new to the invisionzone software, but this is what Ive found so far.

The website software sets up as either public or private. We are a public forum, so the existence of the club / group is visible to public... If set up as "private", no one outside of members would know we even exist.. Counter productive IMO.. 

FYI: There are two parts of our site. PUBLIC and MEMBERS ONLY. The public parts of the current forum are the New Member Introduction, General Discussion, Nugget Hunting, and Meteorite Hunting forums.. The parts of the website that remain private and closed to outside eyes are in the Member's Only section.

FYI: Posts made in Members Only topics (the private sections in our forum) Do Not get searched or indexed by google spiders and other web browser search engines.

The Rub:  The issue as I see it ( and many other invisionzone software users - consider how being member of a mental health patients group might feel as example), is that the member profile info IS always viewable whenever someone makes a comment regardless of section, public or private. Unfortunately, it appears there is no way to turn off the profile display when posting in one of our public forums. Yes, google picks up the info and makes it available for all time.

The registration process asks for First Name and Last Name, and then asks for location, Birthdate, contact method, Gender, etc.... First Name and Last Name fields being Required, the rest is optional... I personally chose not to display much of this info in my profile as example: 

 https://wspa.invisionzone.com/profile/1245-aarcher/      Note here that  Birthday - I left blank... Gender - I left blank  First Name - I used first Initial only  Location - I used NM (not exact location of town) I am not that concerned over a basic profile signature being used when I post or comment here, but making these few changes does make identifying who I am considerably more difficult.  Public display confirms only that there is a member, a archer who lives somewhere in NM. No Birthdate, no gender, etc...

We are looking for a  software plugin that will address this permanently and more efficiently, but in the interim, try these suggestion if you are also concerned:

The Forum is currently setup so that a member's profile info is displayed with any activity. However, Members do have some control of what is seen with options to choose what is shown or not shown (by editing their public profile.

TEMP FIXs TO IMPROVE COMFORT LEVEL while looking for permanent solution

#1. Edit / Delete personal info from profile.

Log in. Click avatar by your user name (top right of welcome screen) /

Click Settings /  Click Account Settings: 

Edit Name, Location, and make any other changes you feel necessary

#2. POST IN A MEMBERS ONLY FORUM when discussing club business. Posts in the Members Only private section will only be seen by other registered Members.      And since this topic was started in public forum, this is all on the record for God and google to collect and covet. hehheh..

 

Bottom Line View from the Top: There are possibly plugins that will allow us to hide member info from guests (and from google spiders) automatically, but posts in public forum will still be visible, and these public posts will be recorded by all the different web browser "spiders" as they look for new content.  If we can find a suitable software plugin, it would allow improved basic privacy shielding members profile, yet still allow us the ability to keep the public presence, and if there is an add on solution found, the Board can decide how to proceed from there.

Too long winded again. Nothing comes ez for me when 'splaining things.....

Questions welcome. Please use private message for specific help in any of this...  aarcher