Your input requested on User names & Full names - proposed change to board

[phys49]

I would like to interject some information that may be of interest. I chose a user name that I do not use anywhere else but the Alembic Club.
Daily I recieve spam at my general email address which starts with Phys49.
The only place it could be coming from is bots or spiders that have accessed my profile on this web site.  
I agree with the folks who favor posting first names only, not full names. The annoyance of the spam is minor and I simply delete it.
I am concerned that posting full names may make it easier for someone who is unscrupulous to defraud a member.
Thanks,
Perry

[dfung60]

Interesting discussion.
 
I think the spidering concerns are valid, but the change proposed here doesn't affect spidering or spam.  As long as your username is a clickable link that goes to your profile and your profile contains a real e-mail address, then you're at risk of being harvested.  I happened to look at the phys49's posting as an example, and that's an interesting one.  If he only uses phys49 as his handle on this board, then it's definitely being harvested if he's getting spam addressed to phys49.  Interestingly, that spider is dumb since the e-mail address in his profile *doesn't* start with phys49.
 
My ISP allows me to set a first level SpamAssassin filter, so if I was harvested here, I don't really know about it consciously.  I suspect that may be the case for others here as well.
 
If I read the first post correctly, the proposed change is really more along the lines of giving people an opportunity to respond and refer to others by their real name vs. handle.  I don't personally have a problem with that change, and don't think that it will have much spamish effect.
 
In a perfect world (and this *is* the Alembic board after all!), I think we'd really want to make a slightly deeper change to make everyone happy.  In addition to allowing you to enter your name and e-mail address in your profile, you should probably be given a check box to let you choose whether either of those items would be visible elsewhere in the system.  This would allow everybody to enter their real name but control whether or not it appeared on the left side info.  Likewise for e-mail, although I doubt that you'd actually want to attach an e-mail address to individual postings.  I think a flag on your e-mail field would be better used to control whether your e-mail was displayed or not in your profile (this allows the administrators to have a reference to all users, but each person can make a decision about whether that info is public or private.
 
Finally, since I'm on a roll, as a final anti-harvesting measure, you might want to create an image or otherwise obsfucate the e-mail address so it's less accessible to a spider.
 
Since the webboard software in use here is proprietary, these sorts of changes are not something we can do, but it would probably be a good input to their suggestion box.
 
David Fung

[bob]

David - you can already choose to not display your email address. Can't swear that will fully hide it, but think so. You don't currently have that option for full name, but of course you don't have to use your full name, as we've discussed.
 
Brad - Google does in fact seem to have some of us there. Type in [Bob Novy alembic] without the square brackets and you'll find my profile right at the top. (Of course, you had to know my whole name to get there - just using Bob seems more likely to turn up some guy named Dylan...)
 
Sorry, Roger, but you're already busted... not straight to your profile, and not even to a direct quote - but you are in the two threads it happens to turn up today.
 
Whether you consider your personal decision to change the entry in your full name field to be a 'backward step' isn't much of an argument - given your concerns, I would (gently) suggest it was more of an oversight or risky gamble in the first place, along with choosing to display your email address.
 
I suppose it might help to have a definitive statement about whether the proposed change would update what appears in the left column for all existing posts, or only future ones. Based on my limited understanding, I'm skeptical that it would change existing posts, but I may be wrong. Unless I missed it, we have not seen a clear statement on this yet.
 
If the answer is that the change would not affect existing posts, and that any future rebuild would only display your most recent profile info, then I think it's time to update your profile and move on.
-Bob

[rogertvr]

As far as I can see, you have to enter a valid e-mail address in your profile.  Besides, changing the e-mail address means it e-mails you a verification key and suspends your profile until you enter the key.  If someone wants to tell me how to get round this, I'll ditch the sensitive information that I don't want on there and move on.  Although I still feel that doing this is a backward step...
 
After I change everything, I'm not bothered what the decision is on this proposed change.  I'm beginning to wish I'd never opened my mouth regarding this lot!

[David Houck]

Roger; personally, I'm glad you opened your mouth, as the issues being discussed are worth consideration.

[oggydoggy]

Yea
 
-Ed

[bob]

Yes, you are required to enter a valid email to register - but you do not have to let anyone else see it.
 
- Click on rogertvr to view your profile.
- In the top right, click Edit Profile.
- Fill in your username and password, click Login.
- Scroll down to Preferences, check the box that says 'Do not display my real e-mail address with my profile'.
- Click Save Profile Changes.
 
In the table above that section, you can choose to hide most anything else, and I also confirmed that you can put whatever you like in the Full Name fielld (I was Bob Nobody for a few minutes, but it just wasn't me).

[musashi]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[musashi]

The moderator wrote:  Then at one point, in response to an isolated issue that was unknown to most of the members, that format was changed so that only the username was shown beside the message. Well that particular issue appears to no longer be a problem, and we are considering a return to the original format of having both the user name and full name shown beside the message.
 
What was the original issue, and what has changed in the interim?

[rogertvr]

Thanks for your help, Bob.  I must admit that I hadn't spotted the option on the profile screen to hide e-mail address.
 
Thus, my profile is suitably butchered.  I can always put it back if the decision is made not to implement the proposed change.  Proof of Concept of hiding various details has now been proven for anyone else who is interested.

[David Houck]

Musashi;
 
All I know about the matter is just enough to be able to say that it was a personal situation for one of our members.  I do not know the member's identity, not do I know any details.  Given the personal nature of the situation, I have no desire to inquire any further; in fact, I think we as a group should respect this person's privacy and pursue this line of inquiry no further.  I do not think that the details of that situation would add anything useful that hasn't already been covered in our discussion here.
 
(Message edited by davehouck on May 31, 2005)

[rogertvr]

I completely agree with Dave here.  The member's privacy was respected then and there is absolutely no requirement to abuse that respect now.

[David Houck]

The if it ain't broke, don't fix it position is a reasonable and understandable position to take.  However, it can be difficult to determine using that criteria when a given action should or should not be taken.  For instance, it wasn't broke and didn't need fixing when we added the FAQ & Must Reads section; most of the information added to those new sections could already be found by clicking on Search.  And it wasn't broke and didn't need fixing when we divided the For Sale section into three separate sections; we could have left them lumped together.  And there are several other things that are not broke and don't need fixing that Mica is spending late night hours working on to make this forum better for our members.  It seems to me that adding the three sections in the For Sale section is a nice improvement since it makes it easier to focus on just the items that are for sale without having to wade through all the Ebay sightings (it used to be difficult to keep up with that one particular S1 For Sale thread when that davehouck guy would be posting all those Nice Essence On Ebay messages); but it wasn't necessary.  And the FAQs and Must Reads seem a nice improvement as well since it's a lot easier to find Joey's setup procedure; but again not necessary.  And the fact that many members are quite often looking up profiles just to get someone's first name, especially the members that read and post daily and are thus doing it several times a session every day when they should be working or at least practicing scales, suggests that getting first names beside the messages would be an improvement too.  So when your mindset is to continually try to improve a product or service that you are providing to people that you care about, it can be difficult to employ the if it ain't broke, don't fix it criteria in the decision making process.  Again, I do see where such an approach can be reasonably seen as an appropriate decision making tool.  But personally, such an approach doesn't seem flexible enough to be of much use to me when I'm assisting Mica with efforts to make this board a more helpful and enjoyable place for our members.  But that's probably just a reflection of my own limitations and where I currently happen to be on the learning curve.  So, please accept my apologies for being unable to apply the if it ain't broke, don't fix it approach.  But I will try to apply the if a desired improvement isn't workable, then it isn't workable approach .
Thanks.

[musikill]

I too am in the web dev business and have been for nearly 10 years.  I am also an expert in ID theft. I understand peoples concerns here but frankly, there is little here to worry about.  You should be much more concerned with one of your friends mentioning something about your bass collection, innocently at a party or to a group of people in a club where you happen to be playing - all it takes is for one of those people act on that info and you could have problem.  This forum is not the rich hunting ground some may think - I have no problem with showing my name next to my post.  Limit the names to first name only; if someone is phishing they still have to take the extra step of opening the profile.  And as Mica said, you have the option of leaving many of the profile fields blank.
 
The issue mentioned about harvesting the site for email addresses is valid but again, this is not the type of forum that say a 'male enhancement' vendor is going to target - it's too far off the track when compared to the rich mining done at a site like match.com.  There is a method to the madness when it comes to the sort of mining people are concerned about in this thread.  Also you should understand that most legitimate businesses are not spidering for the purpose of unethical email address harvesting - but I repeat most.  In general the spiders are looking for meta data related to search requests so they can display quicker, more effective results.  This is what MSN (I think I saw that site mentioned) is more than likely doing.
I would be interested in knowing where (in a general sense) someone is located as I find it interesting to see where this 'club' has members located internationally - sometimes it could help with understanding the point of a post if you can put it into context with regards to culture. (obviously with posts about subjects other than what kind of strings...)
 
I am as paranoid as anyone when it comes to personal information and privacy but the real threats to your ID and privacy are working much richer ponds than this forum.  I feel there is no threat here compared most other ways in which you are vulnerable.
 
I say make the change and be done with it.  There is nothing in the personal data on this site that can't be easily had through hundreds of other sources both on and off line.  Believe me, in less time than it took to write this post I could find out much more about most people than they would feel comfortable with - and using tools widely available.  Too much personal info is available free - from your friendly local, state, and federal gov't(s)- sad but true.
Sorry to sound so doomsday - we're safe here - be happy!
Greg
Los Angeles

[keith_h]

Well said Greg even though I don't subscribe to security through obscurity. To take it a little further I participated in the IETF for a number of years. The minutes and attendees for the working groups get published complete with e-mail addresses. This did/does result in SPAM, even to the folks that design the Internet, but unfortunately it is a cost of doing business. However I don't think most of the SPAMmers and phishers even make an effort to look up addresses. It is much easier to just generate a list of names/id's for a domain and mass send to it. They don't really care if the id's all have people on the other end as the idea is to get a few to respond.
 
Likewise I think you are more likely to give away personal information by visiting a hostile website than by having a spider locate it.  
 
In any event to reiterate my previous vote, I see no problem with adding the names to the screen. It  would make things easier and does not divulge information not already available on the site.  
 
Keith