Warning: your profiles are viewable in Google

Be careful what you include in your profiles; they are viewable in Google.

GOOGLE SEARCH ON "BRIGHTNORM"

Brightnorm

I googled "js" but if my profile was there it was burried. Even a search on "profile for js" didn't yield my profile in the first page of results. hmmm. Anyway, thanks for the heads-up, BN.

That's great!! Can you put your credit card number and expiration date in there?
/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/goodjob.gif

Just checked Mr Bulk and McGizmo; their profiles were right there. I wonder why Google selects some and not others.

BN

But... can't I see the same thing by clicking on your name in the link to the left there? Google indexes things that are linked to by other things that it's indexing. Since many of our user names are rather unique, you'd expect any reference to them to be at the top of the list at google because there are so few "brightnorm"s in the database.

Equally for McGizmo, thats not going to be indexed all that many times and MrBulk isn't exactly a common house hold name (except around here of course /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif ) so they will be at the top of the list.

Is this surprising for some reason I don't understand?

Jim,

I assumed our profiles in CPF were only accessible by members, which would give non-member lurkers an incentive to Google our usernames. If our profiles are viewable in CPF by non-members the whole issue becomes moot.

Maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill but privacy has always been an issue for me, especially on the internet.

BN

My profile isn't there but I found a cool pic.

[ QUOTE ]
brightnorm said:
Maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill but privacy has always been an issue for me, especially on the internet.

BN

[/ QUOTE ]
I don't think you are. I too had initially assumed that member profiles would be viewable only by members. Somehow that makes sense to me. If profiles are crawlable by bots, which they are, if you list your email addy as I did then bots programed to harvest addys to send out spam will pick it up and soon you may be getting unsolicited good deals on Viagra.

Hello Brightnorm,

Is that why I get tons of spam and sexually suggestive emails each day?

Time to change things a bit...

Tom

Tom .. I get those, too, and do not have my addy in the profile ... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif
bernhard

Heh I found a school student that wants to make a line of clothing using the darkgear.com name /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

http://wal.loswego.k12.or.us/epsteinj/students/tri2web/biz/john/

Whoa! The first two things I see when I google my handle is my epinions profile from a couple years ago (you forget the stupid crap you write years ago) and my CPF profile.

Not good. Excuse me while I edit my profiles...

daloosh

OK, I did a little editing. But then I looked again, and there's a cached view of the userlist at CPFUnderground at americanconservatives.net. Not sure what people will be taking away from that, maybe I have some underground connections with some ultraconservative activist group and I bear watching. Oh great, now I'm a person of interest.

Well mine is there also. I removed my email address from my profile over a week ago but it is in the google search plain as day.
I also discovered a few other LifeNRA user names on other forums that are not me. Glad to see some people think like I do when choosing a member name anyway.

NEED TO USE A ROBOTS.TXT TO EXCLUDE THOSE DIRECTORIES. i FIND ALL INFO HERE SEARACHABLE BY GOOGLE ALTHOUGH IT IS REQUIRED TO BE A MEMBER TO SEE IT DIRECTLY FROM THIS SITE.

There's a strange chemistry site bearing my name, and my profile turns up fourth on Google. My real name shows up in my profile, and that comes first in Google.

Lucky I never put my email addy in there, hey.

[ QUOTE ]
I assumed our profiles in CPF were only accessible by members

[/ QUOTE ]

Ah, I see. That makes sense!

A quick log out and surf of the site shows that you do not have to be logged in to view profiles. That explains why they are in google.

I don't know if that is something that you can turn on or off, but if it's something you feel strongly about feel free to make a suggestion in the suggestions or problems with this website forum and Sasha will tell us if this is something that UBB lets you control, and or why it's setup the way it is.

My user profile Underground is also there!

Larry

I did a Google on my username. I thought I had come up with something unique. It seems a lot of people are using it in forums of all kinds.
There's even an
http://www.unclefester.net/
I got bored with looking for my profile and quit.
EDIT I sorta suspected it would be public domain. That's why my email address is an auxiliary one and not my main personal one. Funny, I was just thinking of changing it to my main one when this thread came up. Not anymore!

I checked out SilverFox and Google had 180000 hits on it. I'll just take your word on it. I am not about to look through the whole list. At least not tonight.

Tom

silverfox you got PM