Recently, some idiot posted spam on another message board using my name. Despite the fact I contacted the board’s administrators and fixed the situation, some users keep harassing me. One of the things they have done is to search my nick “Tha_Pig” and they got several links to pages where I’m registered with that mane. One of them is my profile on this message board.

As you can imagine, for these idiots finding the word “Satanism” was the “confirmation” they needed to turn me into some kind of monster. I started being accused of being all kind of nasty things, from pedophile to KKK member. I couldn’t care less about these informant’s opinions, but the case was my privacy was being disturbed by all their crap.

My question is: Is there any way of making the profiles of LTTD users private, so only registered members of the board can read them? I have notice other message boards on the web have a similar feature, which keeps member’s profiles from being searched by outsiders.

I don’t know the technical details of this. It could be a good idea to avoid this kind of annoyances.

Hmm... I noticed this only last night - I googled someone's name (they had an interesting name and I wondered if google might reveal its origins / meaning), and found, in the first page of google results, their profile on LttD and on ToV...

In fact... *googles his own* I get two pages of nothing but direct links to me.

I suppose the important think is to take one's security into one's own hands, and use a different name if it's that important... That said - Yes, private profiles as a feature would be very desireable.

Well, making member profiles only viewable to someone that's allready logged in would work fine if that was the only material showing up in search engines. Unfortunately, last I checked that's not the case.

Any section of the forum that dosn't require a login to view (i can't remember off the top of my head what pages fall into those catagories) is logged/searchable by conventional means. Even if the profile information itself was made unavailable, just the entry of "The_Pig" used here will show up on searches. From that point it's easy to create a dummy account to see any other information (if indeed they feel the need for that. a google search a friend did on me turned up a couple things i've posted on here. he got enough of a "don't ask don't tell" vibe just from the Google results page.).

There are methods to keep verious forms of web spiders (the little programs that log new/updated data for these places and others) from taking notes on your pages. I personally have no clue how you'd impliment it here or if it would be effective (especially since to be truely effective the old data would have to be nulled perhaps?).

This is one of the reasons I advise people not to carry user names from one place or another unless they're sure they want thier identity linked to each place. Sorta too late for that to be helpful here, though.

Such is the price some people may have to pay for being an internet dweller.

I suppose if you are going to have a wide internet presence you would have to accept the consequences of that.

Although I have represented the Church of Satan on radio and in various media outlets I have never once experienced negative reactions or been bothered by spammers.

This would seem to be a predominantly internet problem.

At the probability of appearing blunt I would have to say, you made your bed and you must lie on it.

I don't think it's the responsibility of the board owners to protect us. It is our own responsibility.

Apart from a news website for my home city, I only post here. Unless, that is, I have addressed a specific item regarding the CoS. Otherwise I ignore the internet and its millions of losers.

As I have said before, if you swim in an ocean of shit you are going to get some on you.

>>Remember, those millions of losers are also possible costumers<<

Well, if you're after a costume why not just ask Miss Shiva off these forums? I hear she's a remarkable seamstress.

Sorry. I couldn't help that.

I know what you mean.

But that is what I am saying, depending on where you advertise yourself one has to expect and just deal with such things.

I have linked to the CoS on my own website but have received no negative consequences of doing so.

Some people have mereley asked occasionally, but that's it.

The problem is that in this particular case is I didn’t advertise myself in the wrong place. Someone else did.

Looks like some retarded kid, obsessed with some TV cartoons, has been posting threats and insults to all the members of that show’s message board. Apparently, he also visited my own message board and had left some stupid messages there (which I deleted) Now some of the other geeks says this guy's IP number is logged in both THEIRS and MY board, which has to mean I am HIM.

From that moment on, I have a hundred other cartoon-obsessed kids stalking me everywhere. It’s really annoying.

But on the other hand, since this crap started, visits to my page have duplicated! So, it must be true what they say, there is not such thing as bad advertisement.

No, as far as I'm aware google-spiders can't access PMs. It would be for the same reason that they cannot access Down There; they don't have login permission to go there. Anything open to someone not logged in is free game to them, though.

I havn't done any testing on this matter, at least recently. The best example I can give for the spider lockout is at the Internet Archive; some webpages arn't archived because the site specifically disallowed the spiders from checking things there.

I do believe that Magister Ventrue is going to remedy this situation as is stated here.

Where you pointing this out to me in particular?

If so, thanks for pointing out the obvious.

No, no. Wrong button. Sorry.

From what I understand that will keep the profiles closed, but postings in the general areas will still be "public territory". That alone should be enough of a functional defense against any unneeded grief, but anyone that wishes to keep a distance between LttD and the rest of thier identity (online or otherwise) will still need to take a bit of precaution.