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Help! What do I need to do to fix this.....a friend told me if you google my name it's showing all my posts on this Al-anon website, and sure enough, I googled my name and it shows everything I'm posting on this site! What do I need to do to fix this, anyone know? I already removed my name from the settings portion.....anything else?
I'm really horrified! It's showing every single one of my posts or comments that I've posted on this site on google......if i delete my account, will it delete it all off of google or will all my posts still remain? anyone know? I dont want all my private stuff out there for everyone to see =(
-- Edited by sdisnie on Thursday 9th of June 2011 11:48:17 PM
I was very curious, so I googled my name. None of my information is there but I think it may because I don't use my last name in my profile. So, if nothing else, maybe that would help you out.
Someone has eluded to the idea that they thought their anonymity was automatically protected here, but this is a public message board. It can be crawled by google, yahoo, and another search bot that roams around the internet.
If you are using your full name in your registration, instead of just your last initial you are exposing yourself, it is not Miracles In Progress exposing you to search engines. If you use your personal email account to validate your registration, instead of set one up specifically for this purpose, to protect your anonymity, you are exposing yourself. Miracles In Progress is not exposing you or breaking your anonymity, you are any time you post anything in cyberspace with your identity and email attached to it.
There is nothing that can be done about this sort of thing, other than people protecting their own identity by using only first name and last initial, and setting up an email account specifically for this purpose (to verify their message board registration).
The only way to keep the web crawlers off our site or any site at all, and/or our boards would to be to bury them with password protections, which would interfere with the public who is seeking help and support finding it with us. Not only would it make it impossible for people to find and utilize our site, but it would require that someone be in the back ground screening everyone who attempts to obtain the password, to make sure they are qualified for entrance and even then, they would have to be aware that crawlers are designed by legatimate hackers, they are designed to find what is in cyberspace. So, even with all the password protection, the site user would still have to use only their first name, last initial, and a email account set up solely for the purpose of verifying registration on any 12 step site.
I wish there was more I could do to ensure our protection as a whole, collectively, but in the end, it comes down to each individual protecting their own anonymity on the internet.
Yours In the Spirit of Recovery,
John
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" And what did we gain? A new life, with purpose, meaning and constant progress, and all the contentment and fulfillment that comes from such growth."
Just to let you know: I did a google search on myself and nothing came up. I have used my full name in my registration profile as well as my regular e-mail address.
I used many different angles on the google search----Nothing.
I can't explain it. Just thought I would give this information
I googled myself in many ways and did not come up with anything. I even used the spokeo site. I have changed my last name and used a differerent email since then anyways just to be on the safe side, but nothing here.
Edit your info here as John suggested. You can also edit your email acct- I used to have my first initial and real last name and a few yrs ago I changed my real name to an anonymous made up one, so now I cant be traced or identified.
Also make sure if u have a FB acct- u turn off the new facial recognition software (being implemented soon) if u dont want to be identified by the system in pix.
Ive gone out of my way to stay anonymous online, I may seem paranoid but to me they are cyber boundaries. If u have a smart phone/iphone- make sure u click off the setting that reveals ur location when u snap a pic, too! Take care of YOU whatever that looks like!
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Light, Love, Peace, Blessings & Healing to Us All. God's Will Be Done. Amen.
It's really the personal responsibility of anyone using the internet to educate themselves on how to utilize the internet safely and securely.
Google likely will not clean out the posts after they've been deleted, at least for a certain amount of time until its bots re-index the MIP site. MIP does not have authority to tell Google when they need to re-index the MIP web site. It's all up to Google. And note, too, that Google is not the only search engine out there indexing sites. Yahoo and Bing are two other large search engines, as well, what will display the same or similar results Google pulls up.
John - the only suggestion I would put forth for you is to see if you can put your description on anonymity and the internet on the signup page so it's right in front of people's eyes before they create their logins. I don't know if the message board programming would allow that kind of set up, however, but it might be worth it if you can.
sdisnie - do you use "sdisnie" as your screen name on other sites? Because you feel what information you're posting here on MIP is extremely sensitive, you might want to use a screen name here that you've never ever used any place else. I don't use "Aloha" anywhere but here. You may also want to create a free yahoo or gmail email account that you only associate with your posts here if you're concerned about maintaining your anonymity. Although, for myself, my main email is associated with my account here, a google search using my email address does not pull up any of my MIP activities. Although I have, from the beginning, set up my account settings to not show my email address.
