SC Forums Profile is in Google Options

[Ex_Brit]

Shouldn't the Profiles section here only be viewable by Members? I just found my SC profile when I did a Google search to see how my website was listed.

[Jeff G.]

No, the Profiles and the vast majority of these Forums are of the "all can read, only Members can post" type. Note that currently "We have 4091 registered members".

[Ex_Brit]

No, the Profiles and the vast majority of these Forums are of the "all can read, only Members can post" type.  Note that currently "We have 4091 registered members".

Thanks. I guess it was a knee-jerk reaction. Nothing personal was out there.

[Wazoo]

As things stand today, there is nno robots.txt file on the forum server. I'd asked JT about this years back, but as pointed out, he didn't see the need as there isn't that much to see ... the search engine bots are assigned to the "Guest" group, such that reading of the same data is available to those (try browsing and searching, whatever as Guest to see what you can see ....

The missing robots.txt came up recently when I was working though the logfiles on this server ... I noted that the error logs was full of these entries .... no favicon.ico .. I stole a graphoc from www.spamcop.net and put that in place to stop those errors. However, the creation of even a blank robots.txt file (to at least stop creating all tose 'file not found' errors was not an "allowed" action ....???

IPB forums have many discussions on search engine issues .. for example, some foks upset that the "LoFi" pages get indexed, thus having 'searchers' ending up on pages with no graphics, flat file, nothing but text displayed ... and the complaint is that these "searchers" will dismiss this "ugly" site due to the lack of pretty pictures, no dark background, on and on .... (interesting that the subject matter displayed never seems to enter these types of conversations, but ...) .. on the other hand, other folks wanting to know how to only allow the indexing of "LoFi" pages so as to reduce the bandwidth consumed by the search engine bots, make things easier to read on cell phone & PDA screens .... others offering up files that must weigh a ton to try to lock out everything but some posts ....

The only "contact" type data served up in these instances boil down to your registered/displayed name, the IM contact addresses if one fills those out, data placed in your "signature" ... some would take exception to some of this data being "out there" .... yet, the "requirement" to input that data isn't found in any of the registration process screens ... on the other hand, some folks want the 'exposure' of a web page, and in this case spamcop.net does carry some weight as far as the "linked-to:/by:" rankings used by some search engines in their listing process ....

[Ex_Brit]

Thanks Wazoo. I'm not too worried! I administer an InvisionFree board, very similar. Hey, maybe I should promote SC there...?
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)

This post has been edited by Ex_Brit: Nov 5 2005, 04:33 PM

[dbiel]

To restate it a bit differently.
Your personal profile information is not available to google.
Your posts are visible and therefor your signature, which is part of your post, is also visible. It just happens that your signature is edited and created within your personal profile, but it is the public information that you have chosen to display on each and every post you make.

Edit: it appears that I do not know of what I speak.
In testing access I do find that guests do have access to view the profile account as displayed when clicking on the user name.
The restricted information such as email address is actually not part of the profile file but is store and accessed separately.

This post has been edited by dbiel: Nov 6 2005, 03:20 AM

[Jeff G.]

Let's get some terminology straight. In these Forums, a Profile has certain fairly innocuous data in it. For instance, my Profile http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?...5311&qpid=35568 had the following info in separate sections when I started composing this Reply:

Active Stats
User's local time  Nov 5 2005, 11:58 PM
Total Cumulative Posts  2920
( 5.9 posts per day / 8.37% of total forum posts )
Most active in  SpamCop Reporting Help
( 902 posts / 31% of this member's active posts )
Last Active  5th November 2005 - 11:56 PM
Status  User is online! (Reading a profile)

Information
Home Page  http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showuser=2041
Birthday  No Information
Location  Northeast New Jersey (New York Metro Area), USA ... Favorite Meal: Fried Spammer (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
Interests  No Information

Communicate
AIM  No Information
Yahoo  No Information
ICQ  No Information
MSN  No Information
Contact  Send a Personal Message
Contact  Send an Email

Additional Information
No Information

plus my Signature (duplicated below).

Note that my email address is not directly revealed - emails to me go through the Forum software. However, my Yahoo and MSN Messenger contact info would have been revealed as email addresses, and my AIM contact info could have been revealed as an email address (that is, one of my multiple AIM accounts carries the ID of my AOL account, which is also an email address).

The Information and Communicate section info (such as it is) I edited using the Edit Profile info Link in the Personal Profile section of My Controls.

All of this Profile info is available via Google.

This post has been edited by Jeff G.: Nov 6 2005, 12:21 AM

[Ex_Brit]

It's very easy through the Admin interface to ensure that this section is not visible to guests/web crawlers

[Jeff G.]

It's very easy through the Admin interface to ensure that this section is not visible to guests/web crawlers

It appears that neither of these Forums' Admins (JT and Wazoo) has chosen to restrict Profile visilbility to guests/web crawlers.

[Ex_Brit]

Yes. It would take all of 30 seconds to do it too.

[Wazoo]

It appears that neither of these Forums' Admins (JT and Wazoo) has chosen to restrict Profile visilbility to guests/web crawlers.

checking some of my old notes ... JT set this thing up to be pretty much "open to all" .... somewhat recently, I did kill off all "Guest" posting abilities based on spammers finally gatting around to posting here .... so, yes, as a follow-on to that action and this issue being raised here, change has been made. Existing data in Google's archive will have to be dealt with by the user, as I don't believe I can make a blanket statement/request to Google to remove a bunch of data .... change was done a number of days ago, I'm just way behind in keeping up with myself .....

[Ex_Brit]

Thanks Wazoo.

[Farelf]

... Existing data in Google's archive will have to be dealt with by the user, as I don't believe I can make a blanket statement/request to Google to remove a bunch of data ....

This appears to resolve itself - or someone has given it a hand to do so? If I Google my forum name now I just get the This menu has been disabled and subsequent suggestions to log myself in. Even the cached version (retrieved 7 November 2005). IFF logged out when doing so - no folks, don't seek to verify this in the middle of composing a post, as I did (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Which just leaves all the other forums to which one might subscribe using the same handle and which aren't as helpful as Wazoo and SpamCop. Ex_Brit was right to be concerned, a little additional tid-bit here, another there, they all add up for a data miner, don't they Peter? Not to mention the WayBack Machine.

Kudos to "our" (IMG:http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/style_images/1/folder_team_icons/admin.gif) for fixing it "here".

[Added retrieval date for Google cache - not all caches will be this advanced at this instant]

This post has been edited by Farelf: Nov 8 2005, 11:19 PM

[Wazoo]

Just an interesting side-effect of the Guest permissions changes ...
The actual link provided http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showuser=491 works when one is "logged in" (here) as all the 'conditions' are met to display (based on 'you' being a Member)

The cached link http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:iMjsC...91+farelf&hl=en tried to take you to Google's cahced page, but .... this Forum doesn't do static pages, it's all .PHP scripted ... so that the "data" isn't actually on Google's server, and the attempt to then try to 'pull' the data from that page view fails due to being seen as (at best) a Guest ....

So, thanks to your looking, it appears that no effort is required on other user's data ... it only exists 'here' ... Thanks again ...

[Jeff G.]

--
Best Regards, Jeff G.
I have been a SpamCop User/Member/Customer since 1999 and am a Moderator of the new web-based forums (now the primary method for getting help, http://forum.spamcop.net/). Please contact me via Forum, Group, and/or List only. Except items that I specifically solicit (at my sole discretion), I do not accept any messages sent via PM, IM, or Email. If any such message is received, the sender acknowledges that: the message (including its source IP Address) will not be considered confidential or proprietary; I and my affiliates are under no obligation to keep it confidential; and I will have an unrestricted, irrevocable, world-wide, royalty free right to use, communicate, reproduce, publish, display, distribute, exploit, post, report, and/or ridicule it in any manner I choose. I do not provide Official SpamCop.Net Customer Support - please see How To Get Official SpamCop.Net Customer Support for that. Links: My Posts My Topics HyperMart Ad-Aware SpyBot Search&Destroy Stinger Wndows Update AVG Anti-Virus Windows AntiSpyware ZoneAlarm..


P.S. Thanks to Ex_Brit and Wazoo, I can't in good conscience refer to http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showuser=2041 in public any more (because one has to be logged in to see it), so I'll just have to refer to this Post's URL http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?...dpost&pid=37585 instead. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

My Forum Signature now refers to this Post.

This post has been edited by Jeff G.: Feb 21 2006, 05:52 PM