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How do I hide my posting history?
- Thread starter Nobita
- Start date
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Ah... Ok, I'll live with the shame of my old posts viewable by everyone then... Hehehe
If there are posts that you would like deleted, you can report them using the icon to the left of the post and we'll look into it. Can't simply hide them though.
Even if they were to be deleted you have to assume that they would be saved or cached or viewable somewhere.
Go back and edit the offending post and reduce it to nothing.
(You want shameful and embarrassing posting history? Try usenet. Google Groups has archives going back decades...)
(You want shameful and embarrassing posting history? Try usenet. Google Groups has archives going back decades...)
There really should be a rule that you cannot delete huge chunks of posts all at once after a certain time period. Sure we all might change what we write but not 10 hours later.Now he has to bribe everyone who quoted him to change their quotes..
If you need to edit an old post, we hope you will avoid reduce it to nothing, since this can make nonsense out of a discussion in which others participated and which may be useful to others in the future. If you can remove just the personal information that you consider a problem, that's preferable.
Keep in mind that users are free to stay anonymous in these forums, so even an old post that looks a bit embarrassing in hindsight shouldn't have dire consequences.
If, despite this request, you think that one of your posts needs to be removed entirely, you can report the post and have the moderators remove it for you so you wont leave empty-post clutter in the thread.
If you remove personal information from a post but the whole post was quoted by somebody else, you can report that post and ask the moderators to edit the quote to match your updated post. We don't want to spend a lot of time doing this for many users or many posts, but we're glad to help for an occasional situation where information needs to be removed.
Keep in mind that users are free to stay anonymous in these forums, so even an old post that looks a bit embarrassing in hindsight shouldn't have dire consequences.
If, despite this request, you think that one of your posts needs to be removed entirely, you can report the post and have the moderators remove it for you so you wont leave empty-post clutter in the thread.
If you remove personal information from a post but the whole post was quoted by somebody else, you can report that post and ask the moderators to edit the quote to match your updated post. We don't want to spend a lot of time doing this for many users or many posts, but we're glad to help for an occasional situation where information needs to be removed.
I have stuff that I posted on Usenet (*before* there was an internet) that was always intended to stay private to that group, and thanks to Google, it is now accessible to billions of humans, intelligent computers, and genetically modified animals for the rest of the foreseeable future.
Yes I can still find it with the right Google search. My name is quite rare so it doesn't take much digging. And no I'm not telling you what.
Yeah, I've participated in more than my fair share of dumb Usenet flame wars and rants, fallen prey to a few trolls, and made a few stunning displays of ignorance in my time. Nothing bad, but mildly embarrassing, and the post signatures I used at the time connect me with organizations such as my school engineering club which begins to reveal a bit too much personal information than I'm comfortable with now (15+ years later).
What's always fun is reading Usenet archives through Google Groups and finding a post that you wrote but don't remember writing.
What's always fun is reading Usenet archives through Google Groups and finding a post that you wrote but don't remember writing.
Holy cow, really? I should note that. Next time I create a username it should be very ambiguous like manGirlApple6129 or something like that...
But on a rather serious note, there's no way at all to delete the posts? I know we can protect our Flickr, Facebook, or twitter, so why not this?
Technical answers:
- You can delete any post you want by removing the content or by asking the moderators to remove the post.
- In theory the site owner or people he authorizes could remove any set of posts or excise a user directly from the database.
- We discourage users from removing large numbers of posts because it's a disservice to other users.
- If there's a privacy issue they should let us know and we'll help them remove the information that's causing a problem. If there's a privacy issue with their user name they should read the FAQ section about it and then contact us.
- We never delete content directly from the database.
Well, if you want posts deleted, there are mechanisms to do so, as stated above already. But the fundamental difference is that Flickr, Facebook, etc. have provisions for you to choose which of your posted data is "public" and which is "private". A forum, such as this one, or Usenet, is 100% public by default.
Almost all of MacRumors is public. There's a private forum to which members with paid site subscriptions have access. That forum is not indexed by search engines.
It's good advice not to post something you might later regret having the public see, since anyone who can see what you posted can potentially share what you posted, and not all sites are as careful about privacy as we are. While we certainly don't want users to hide behind anonymity to troll or make other inappropriate posts, we think the anonymity afforded by letting you choose your own user name (and never revealing email addresses) lets you preserve forum privacy to the extent you want.