Having experienced this personally on a different forum, I can accept the loss of my posts if it means someone else's privacy is protected.

Another way to protect privacy more would be to have an option for posts to be readable only by logged-in, registered members.

Hi AG,
I agree with Alpaca...delete mine if someone else's privacy is compromised.

Totally fine to delete if needed.

Agree. Can it make my post count go down too? Seriously, though, I would be absolutely OK with it. If there is anything profound I absolutely want saved from what I write on here (not that I am ultra-profound, but it might happen on occasion that I make a connection on here that I have not made elsewhere), I will save my own writing to my journal. I'm not worried about its disappearance, especially in the face of someone experiencing cyber-abuse as the result of exposure. Also, if the ability to delete quickly and completely makes others feel safer to post, even for a brief time, what is going on with them, I think that is of benefit to the whole community in being able to learn from and help one another.

Fine by me. I hardly ever re-read my own writings anyway, but more than that, I think it's important that people feel safe sharing here.

Agree wholeheartedly with what everyone has said.

It`s fine by me

Fine by me

No problems with deleting in such cases, AG. Thanks for watching out for those members whose privacy is violated.

SG

Yes, I agree. Delete my posts if need be... in the case of an emergency. Safety for the members is of the utmost concern.

No worries either from me AG, peoples' safety and privacy must always be the most importance. Thank you for checking though

Agreed with the group. Emergency situations need emergency response that will keep the original poster safe. Delete away as needed.

My question now is what,if nything, can we do to better protect anonymity?

quote:

Would it be ok if I did so without permission?

Yes, it is okay with me.

fine with me too

Whatever needs to be done AG. May I ask if the breach of security came from within the forum membership or outside? Just curious!

This is fine with me, too!

Brokes

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for all the input, I appreciate it. I'm down with a sinus infection so it's going to be a day or two until I can address some of the discussions. There does seem to be general agreement that it would be ok to delete.

I am concerned at this point that if someone is uncomfortable with posts being deleted, it would be difficult to say so and disagree with everyone else. If you are feeling that way, please PM me to let me know. It will be kept confidential and there will be no judgement, I just want to make sure everyone is heard.

Morgs, I did say in the original post, but it must have slipped by, that their privacy was violated by someone in their real life gaining access to their computers/emails. As a matter of fact, every single time I have seen someone's username get connected to their real identity, it has been through someone in their real life accessing or seeing the psychcafe on their computer. There has never been a breach from within the forum membership that I know of.

Xoxo, I wanted to check to see if I understood what you were saying. You would prefer all of the forums be private? Or you just want another private forum whose only purpose is to be private?


AG

I will just chime in that if there were a private, general-purpose forum, I would probably only post there. I am willing to take the risk at this point to post publicly, but I think it would be great to have another option.

AG,

A little late to this thread. I don't care about my posts and so if they were deleted it wouldn't bother me. Especially if someone else's privacy and/or safety were being compromised.

The only thing that would bother me I think is the lack of control aspect of it, that something disappeared and I didn't know why or I might worry that something bad happened to someone and get triggered. But I could learn to deal with that. I could guess that something had happened and that's why the thread went missing. Would it be possible to give notice? How quickly would you need to act?

Liese

I'm late to this as well but would like to say that I understand the importance of forum member's safety. At this point in time I don't save a copy of my posts to my own computer assuming that I will have access to them in the future. Ideally I would like to be notified so I can save my posts if I wished but I can understand that would be time consuming. I will try and keep copies of my posts archived on my own computer.

Thank you for asking for opinions,

delete away as needed to help protect privacy and safety.

quote:

The only thing that would bother me I think is the lack of control aspect of it, that something disappeared and I didn't know why.... Would it be possible to give notice? How quickly would you need to act?

These are my questions as well. I think most of us would not mind much having our posts deleted if we knew it was for the benefit of protecting a fellow forum member. But will we know if that is what happened?

I am also curious as to whether it would be possible to allow us as forum members to delete our own posts ourselves, all at once, instead of only having the privilege to delete them one at a time, which is impractical. Why make you have to do it for us, if we are the owners of our own posts? Just my thoughts.

quote:

privacy has been violated by someone in their real life

I really don't care about what I have written. But I learn so much from everyone else. It would be a shame if whole threads disappeared because someone got triggered.

I guess I'm also afraid that someone might get triggered by something that might not turn out to be as big a threat as they originally thought but it would be too late and everything would be gone.

But I'm probably going off on my own tangent here thinking that this random deleting of threads would start to happen insidiously and then before we knew it half the forum would be gone.

I'm sure I'm blowing it up out of proportion and it's not going to happen that way.

AG, I really don't care one way or another. Just wanted to voice some thoughts I had.

xoxo

Liese

Hi All,
Again I appreciate everyone responding and sharing your opinions. I also want to emphasize one more time that if anyone has a concern or comment that they are concerned might be unpopular or open them to criticism, I would urge them to post. I really believe that no one will judge, and I think it is important to have an open discussion about these subjects. If I didn't think so, I would not have started the topic in the first place. But if posting on OF feels too unsafe, do not hesitate to PM me.

I should have known there is no such thing as a simple question. I want to address some questions that have come up but if I have missed anything or if someone has thought of something else they want to ask, please go ahead and post again and let me know.

quote:

R2G said:My question now is what,if nything, can we do to better protect anonymity?

R2G, part of the answer to your question is going to be part of a larger discussion I think we will be having about a private forum being available (see below), but I am going to answer this based on the present structure of the forum. Your identity here is secure from the standpoint that no one has access to any information about you that you do not choose to make available. Yes, everything on OF is available on Google, so the best way to protect yourself is to be careful about what personal details you reveal in your posts. I'm not highly concerned about the privacy issue, so I tend to be pretty relaxed about it for myself (I do want to be clear that I understand and take seriously others' concerns) so I am also fairly open in terms of information such as my gender, age, location, job, etc. If you are highly concerned about privacy I would suggest concealing all of that information. Off the top of my head, the things that spring to mind are gender, age, marital status, sexual orientation, physical location, employment, and education. Any biographical facts that someone could use to try and figure out who you are. If none of that information is available under your username, then it is difficult for anyone to connect your username with your actual identity.

In terms of your personal computer, I would recommend either setting your browser to not retain any history OR to clearing your history whenever you are done surfing. If you keep copies of your posts here, place them in encrypted files for which only you have the password. Speaking of which, placing a password on your account and creating a folder to which only you have access if you share a computer with other family members is also helpful.

I think that using all those measures provides a level of safety that is not casually or easily penetrated.

quote:

xoxo said:Another private forum for all topics, while keeping the Open Forum intact.

I do not think the issue of having a private forum for all topics is as simple as it seems. I have reservations about doing so, and would want input from other members, but would like to take this issue up in another topic if that would be ok? It is another subject on which I think a wider discussion is called for and I don't want to get things confused here. I will start another topic later today or tomorrow when I have time to do so, or feel free to start the discussion on another thread yourself.

quote:

Liese said:The only thing that would bother me I think is the lack of control aspect of it, that something disappeared and I didn't know why or I might worry that something bad happened to someone and get triggered. But I could learn to deal with that. I could guess that something had happened and that's why the thread went missing. Would it be possible to give notice? How quickly would you need to act?

Liese, in the cases that prompted this question, it has been very clear that a breach has taken place and in at least two cases, time really was of the essence. The other aspect that makes this difficult is that discussing the situation or even the need to delete on Open Forum can worsen the problem by highlighting the person who is deleting or changing their identity. Even so, in the past I have put up notices letting people know that if they had concerns after noticing someone missing to PM and ask. I am willing to provide an explanation (that does not in its turn violate another member's privacy) in PM as no one has access to PMs except the members invited to a thread. There have been cases I have not posted a notice because I went through the exercise of deleting only that persons' posts. Since there are many members who do that themselves, and I am acting only as an agent for the member to delete their own posts, I did not feel any public announcement was called for. Even in those cases, if I edit someone else's post, I will try to indicate that it is by their request. I think the best way to handle it if you (meaning anyone not just you ) are triggered by posts going missing is to PM the person concerned, or myself. Even if I cannot provide details, I can usually at least provide enough of an explanation for people to realize that it isn't about anything they themselves have done nor is it about their posting.

quote:

Cipher said:These are my questions as well. I think most of us would not mind much having our posts deleted if we knew it was for the benefit of protecting a fellow forum member. But will we know if that is what happened?

Cipher, I think I need clarification to answer this question. Your question implies that posts would be deleted for some other reason. But the reason I am asking my question in the first place is that I do not think it is ok to just delete someone else's post without permission if it does not violate forum guidelines. If I need to move or delete a post for any reason, I will contact the person whose post it is, at a minimum after the fact, to let them know what happened and why. So at this time, there are only two cases in which a person's post would be deleted 1) It violates forum guidelines, in which case no permission is needed. 2) The member requests that it be deleted. My asking this question is checking to see whether it would be ok to add a third case which would be deleting without permission in order to protect another members' identity.

quote:

I am also curious as to whether it would be possible to allow us as forum members to delete our own posts ourselves, all at once, instead of only having the privilege to delete them one at a time, which is impractical. Why make you have to do it for us, if we are the owners of our own posts? Just my thoughts.

This is a very understandable question. The problem here is that the Shrinklady's recognition that each person owns their own posts (not true on every forum. Some forum guidelines explicitly state that anything you post then becomes the property of the forum and can be used, deleted, etc at the discretion of the admin) is not really supported by the software that is used for the forum. Only someone with admin privileges can do mass deletes. So it's not a matter of not allowing it, it's a matter of there's no way to do so.

Morgs, I am sorry but I am not sure what your posting the quote from me meant, so it's hard to address. My best guess is that you objected to the phrase "real life" as meaning not on the forum. If that is so, I apologize. I very much consider the relationships here to be very real and part of my life. Some of my closest friendships have been formed through contact here. It was just a handy phrase to distinguish "online" from "offline/not forum" people. Actually in all the cases that this has occurred that I have been involved in, it has been a family member. I am often deliberately vague as to what happened in order to further protect people's privacy. What I was trying to say is that it wasn't about someone finding psychcafe or googling and then connecting a person's posts here to their real identity (versus their username); it's been about someone seeing their activity on their computers, seeing psychcafe displayed and possibly coming after them. Hope that helps. If I misunderstood what you meant by posting the quote, I would appreciate you letting me know so I can address the problem or concern. Please feel free to PM me if that would be more comfortable.

AG

i am ok with my posts being deleted for protecting someone's privacy - i am not that attached to my words anyway and i try not to read what i had written previously so as not to cringe

puppet

Could threads that someone with "compromised privacy" has posted in be moved to a private area quickly as a temporary measure - so that people who have posted could be notified and review/save their posts as necessary before the entire thread is deleted? Just a thought...

Happy New Year to all x

I can certainly check into mass deleting for members, I'll have to pass that request along to Shrinklady. Since I am using the interface, but am not involved in the coding, I have no idea if it's possible or how much work it might be, but hey, we can ask right? But even if that is available, it still does not solve this problem which is that if a member deletes a post that starts a topic, the whole thread, including other people's posts are deleted. We'd just be transferring the problem from me to the individual user. They would still face the process of weeding out threads they started and deleting only their responses.

Rio, I do like the idea of moving them to a private area instead of deleting. It wouldn't help in the case of a compromised password, but in all other cases, it would provide a quick way to keep things private. I'm going to check into doing that. Thanks for the input.

quote:

it would provide a quick way to keep things private.

Coming out of my lurkdom to respond to this. I might be paranoid and naive here, but in my opinion the private forums are not any safer. If I were trying to get info about someone that I knew posted here and saw that there were password protected forums that I can easily register for and get the password to then how does this fix anything? I may have missed something, but I've never felt that the private forums were really and truly all that private.

quote:

Even if I cannot provide details, I can usually at least provide enough of an explanation for people to realize that it isn't about anything they themselves have done nor is it about their posting.

I think this response to Liese answers my question, AG. Thank you.

It's too bad that its apparently not possible to mass delete one person's posts without also deleting entire threads that they have started. I probably would not miss my own posts very much but I do get much benefit from reading the wisdom and experience of others. However, maybe it is for the best in the case of an emergency privacy breach, because all comments referencing and/or quoting the initial poster could potentially be used to identify that poster. So the deletion of entire threads which the affected person started would actually be safer for that one individual. I like Rio's idea that it would be nice if there was a way to avoid it or at least postpone deletion by moving the threads to a more restricted area, but the person whose privacy had been breached would need to feel that such an option truly offered security from their offenders.

AG, I appreciate your thoughtfulness and mindfulness in trying to sort out this dilemma to everyone's satisfaction. Ultimately, if no feasible solution can be found to save our posts while at the same time protecting those at high risk of privacy violation, then it seems to me that the lesser harm would be to go forward with deleting our posts in the affected threads. That is the security I would want if I were a victim myself.

Cipher,
Glad that answered your question.

To All,
I think that after reading everyone responses here and some input that has been sent privately, my bottom line is that deleting other people's posts is something that should only be done in an extremity of need. So for right now, I am going to continue deleting and editing the way I have been, unless the situation is dangerous enough to make it worth deleting other people's posts without permission (I appreciate that so many of you are willing to make that sacrifice to help protect another member). In those cases, where that proves necessary -and I will set the bar very high- I will also make some kind of annoucement that it has happened so that I can communicate in private the circumstances.

In the meantime, I will consult with Shrinklady and her webmaster to see if changes can be made to the forum software such that a first post could be deleted without losing the entire thread. It is always such a loss whenever someone's posts are deleted for any reasons that I hate to add to it. It also makes for some very confusing reading after the fact.

Thanks again to everyone for their input, it really helps me to craft a response that balances everyone's needs. I appreciate all of your patience when I don't quite get there.

AG

crazy times here, and no time to post on here at all- missing all of you- but I noticed this and wanted to let you know AG, that it is totally ok to delete anything of mine, anytime, with or without permission- especially if someone's privacy is compromised! ((((((hugs everyone))))

Beebs

Sorry bit late here but yes do delete to protect people.

If I ever post a long post and I want to keep it, I save it before I post it - I am over 40 and my memory is poor so I sometimes want to go back and see what I said.

Useful to save actually because it sometimes shows how we grow and change our mind