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I have noticed lately an alarming increase in the number of posts with signatures including much private information that has to be later removed. In my ignorance, I tend to associate this with the increasing numbre of people posting from their mobile phones.
Regardless of the causes for this, can something be done to automatically prevent this from happening? As I understand things, once such data has been posted in a public forum such as this, the damage is already done and cannot be corrected simply by deleting the data from the post.
Of course, I am perfectly aware that the responsibility for not posting sensitive personal data lies with the poster, not with this site.
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Nothing automatic, no.
And your guess about the cause of this rise may be correct. Impossible to say.
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Pity. And unfortunately, I cannot think of any non-automatic way that has any chance of being succressful. Anyone?
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Claudio, Terri,
And the obvious damage control (or at least limitation) at the root, namely to make the poster aware of the issue without replying to the post in question and thereby making it impossible for anyone but moderators to change anything, is often impossible.
Most unfortunate.
This reminds me of a statement I saw some years ago about spam mails: the only way to avoid spam mails is to shoot everyone that replies to them.
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Jacob:
And the obvious damage control (or at least limitation) at the root, namely to make the poster aware of the issue without replying to the post in question and thereby making it impossible for anyone but moderators to change anything, is often impossible.
Just a reminder, a post is only marked UNEDITABLE if that individual post has been replied to, not simply any reply in the thread.
So, as long as the post in question is not the first post in the thread, there is an easy solution. Reply to the first post in the thread.
For instance, if post #10 in a thread contains personal information, you can reply to post #1 in the thread. Your reply will become post #11, and post #10 can still be editted by its originator. This would not be the case if you replied to post #10, though. In both cases your post appears as #11.
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I usually use the trick of responding to any previous post, not necessarily the first one. Which of course doesn't work if you are trying to warn the author of the first post...
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When you go through all the trouble not to respond to the post containing private information, have you ever seen anybody actually removing their email address?
I think that a great number of posters simply don't care; they rely on their email provider (Hotmail, Google, Yahoo), or their ISP to provide spam filtering.
Maybe we should also stop caring. If I think about the amount of time I spend every day removing such private data from user posts, warn them about the public nature of this forum, just to get a reply that again contains all the email headers...
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Pat Willener wrote:
When you go through all the trouble not to respond to the post containing private information, have you ever seen anybody actually removing their email address?
...
I have seen a non-negligible number of people removing their information, and in some cases I have even been thanked for the warning. Of course, they are not a majority; but if I can teach a single person to be more careful with personal data, I am quite willing to continue going through all that trouble. Which isn't really all that troublesome.
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I have no idea how many use e-mail to read posts, which personally I think is horrible. Anyways, if you want to warn post #10 to delete their personal information, and respond to any other post, then will they get it if they are not the OP? Or do they only get the post it you respond to their post?
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Don't know; probably not, that's why I answer to a previous message from the same person, if available. If there is no previous message, well, that's his/her bad luck.
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I read the post first as regular email (have email notification setup). But I then click on the link to the subject before I reply.
I do this so I don't bother going to subjects/Threads I'm not qualified for, don't have an answer an answr for.
If you go in through a web browser you haveto remember what section (Acrobat, Forum comments) then you have to more or less have to read every post.
If there was a way that all the threads you are following were at the top of the list and Then maybe reading tthrough the Browser directly would be fine. AS its set up now it’s a PIA.
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I know, John, but often the information is stated in the OP, with no (other) posts added. And sometimes you have to reply to whomever else, if any.
Pat, I have seen it most of the times I have made a comment on it.
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We have a category on the Report page for 'Private information' to deal with this type of thing. Rather than juggle about with indirect replies, just report the message and one of the moderation team will edit it ASAP.
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I didn't know that!
Do people who are not moderators need to do anything special when they report the incorrectly visible private info?
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Dave Merchant wrote:
We have a category on the Report page for 'Private information' to deal with this type of thing. Rather than juggle about with indirect replies, just report the message and one of the moderation team will edit it ASAP.
Where is this Report Page?
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I think he means this item in the pulldown menu of the Report Abuse window:
And I guess this is better than nothing...
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I have never even considered clicking the Report button when it was called Report Abuse. Looking now I can see that the word Abuse only comes up when the next window is opened.
Still, it should be termed differently, not just Report Abuse, maybe Abuse or other issues.
As it is, reporting Private Information is most likely interpreted as something malicious, like spam, rather than lack of caution.
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Claudio González wrote:
As I understand things, once such data has been posted in a public forum such as this, the damage is already done and cannot be corrected simply by deleting the data from the post.
Damage? You talk as though allowing the world to see one's eMail address is akin to asking for trouble.
What do people do with such personal information in your neck of the woods that's so awful?
-Noel
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I wonder if it sets up the forums to the scrutiney of Botts that look for email addresses.
there are easy ways to write email address so botts ignore them one is write every part of the address as individual words with spaces.
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Noel Carboni wrote:
Claudio González wrote:
As I understand things, once such data has been posted in a public forum such as this, the damage is already done and cannot be corrected simply by deleting the data from the post.Damage? You talk as though allowing the world to see one's eMail address is akin to asking for trouble.
What do people do with such personal information in your neck of the woods that's so awful?
-Noel
You have heard about spam and spammers and related things, haven't you? And that, once personal data that can be useful for them has been posted, deleting it from the message(s) does not remove it from the web?
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I guess I just regard spammers as a nuisance that's already dealt with by the anti-spam systems that must be in use by anyone who uses eMail. Publishing an eMail address publicly isn't going to end someone's world.
It's nice that you are concerned for others, but personally I think you're going overboard worrying about what personal information other people post. But hey, knock yourself out. It's all good.
-Noel
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Auto responders are the worst lol. only takes 1-3 people to completly mess up whole forums, lol
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I guess I just regard spammers as a nuisance that's already dealt with by the anti-spam systems that must be in use by anyone who uses eMail.
That is why all of my POP accounts go through MailWasher, before even the headers are downloaded to my e-mail program.
Now, I sort of feel about the spammers, as I did about people, who stole radios, etc., from automobiles. Going way back, my wife's Saab had a premium sound system, with a security feature. If removed from the auto, it took a 20 character pass-code to ever activate again. I always felt that things would be better, if there was a satchel charge in the radio, where if one entered the wrong code three times, it exploded, with great violence!
Maybe we could work out something, along those lines, for spammers?
Hunt