Big Woah With Google

[Grimoire]

So, being of a computing nature, I googled my name. My Real Name, I came up with my personal profile on here. Thinking that all was secure on this site, I found out that upon that google I was second from the top, Page 2 with my city, state, full name, email address all visible. Thats pretty revealing. I have since changed these things, but I just would like to point that out. Is there a way to encode or cypher these items, or to make private so only registered forum users can see them? I dont always like to lie on forums, but it seems that sometimes, thats the case. Sorry for being brazen but I take security to be a big coo, and I just couldnt help myself. Thanks for the time though.Cheers.

[joatmon]

there's an item under my profile -> user options to hide your email address. you don't want to set your email address to something bogus, because when you change your email address, the forum software automatically changes your password and emails the new password to the new address. That happened here visibly a few years ago, there was a dispute between members, one changed his email address to some non-existent account, and then couldn't log in. He thought he'd been banned, and there was drama in the aftermath. so hide your email, and if you ever did mess up your email, can't log in and can't get the new password, email NSimkins and ask for help, there's an email at the end of the "ABOUT US" page linked at the top of every genvibe pageI like that google has crawled genvibe. It comes in handy, sometimes google search works better than the forum search, especially since the forum search won't for three letter terms. Also, if you need to see some forum info during the few periods when the forum is offline, you can google it and load the cached version, just throw site:forums.genvibe.com at the end of your search string

[Grimoire]

Right, I saw that, but what about the rest of the information? Like I said, I can lie about that, but why should I? Is there a setting on VB that will let a privacy setting be selected?

[joatmon]

Quote, originally posted by Grimoire »Right, I saw that, but what about the rest of the information? Like I said, I can lie about that, but why should I? Is there a setting on VB that will let a privacy setting be selected?I don't know what VB is. I don't know if there is such an option on the forum software that genvibe uses. Maybe a mod or admin can answer that. I've always used a bogus name and hid my email address here. If they come up with a way to make name/email only viewable by logged in members, I'd still leave my settings the way they are

[Kari]

While I don't know about the forum software available settings, there is HTML code that can be used to tell search crawlers to ignore certain pages -- however, they don't HAVE to ignore them. Some crawlers ignore that code and crawl the page anyway. I think the best strategy is to be mindful of what you do and don't want to be searchable on the internet when you are posting and creating profiles.

[NSimkins]

Quote, originally posted by Grimoire »Right, I saw that, but what about the rest of the information? Like I said, I can lie about that, but why should I? Is there a setting on VB that will let a privacy setting be selected?I enabled the "Hide E-Mail Address" feature by default for new members back in March 2007 due to some concern, however the other information in the Profile is optional to fill-out.Unfortunately there is no other privacy-related options I can enable on this system.

[Grimoire]

Right, Okay. Thats what I was wondering. But thank you for the answers. I still search around this forum and I plan on still using it. Thanks for tolerating my thread. If you want to close it, I would thank you.

[WaveAction]

none of my info comes up at all on google, when i search my name, im a hockey player for the medicine hat tigers