View Full Version : Important Announcement
herakles
10-03-2008, 09:08
Recently a new member made a post in which he included his email address.
You may not know that both Google and Yahoo automatically scan every post made here and read your profile. As such anything you post here will soon end up in these search engines.
The email address you gave to the Forum on registering is securely held and cannot be read by them.
We can only advise you NOT to put any personal information in a post you make - unless you are happy that the whole world can read it.
Herakles
Moderator
:eek:
astraltrader
10-03-2008, 14:44
Excellent advice, Herk. Only a suggestion but would it not be better to transfer this to the Announcement section? New entrants need to read this before they end up in Everything else!
romft1945
10-03-2008, 16:30
Good idae Terry and thanks Herks I never knew the posts were scanned is nothing sacred anymore:eek:
ROM
John Brown
10-03-2008, 16:33
Does that go for any info put in private messages as well?
John
Regarding search engine spiders, we allow google, yahoo and some of the others, msn, askjeeves etc, to 'crawl' the site. This means they can access any of the public pages, and in turn we get indexed in their search engine. If you make any information publically available by sharing it in a public thread, the spiders will get that information. Private messages however, are not part of the public site, and so can only be accessed by the intended recipient and sender. I (just me - the site admin) can also manually dig them out of the database files should the need arise.
The advice is sound not to put any information in a public post that you don't want everyone to know. Spammers trawl through forums - or rather send their robots to trawl through forums - for email addresses.
herakles
10-03-2008, 23:44
Only posting to put this at the top again.
herakles
13-03-2008, 20:26
Yesterday I watched whilst a Yahoo! Slurp Spider methodically read my profile here and digested the lot.
So I did an experiment. I Googled my board name. Now I am "fortunate" in that my board name is very common - Herakles is the Greek spelling of Hercules, so over 1,000,000 hits were registered. I confess that I gave up after scanning 40 pages.
However I still found several references to my postings at various sites. One link listed every thread I have made at a particular site.
Those of you with uncommon names will have less trouble finding references to yourself.
It really underscores the point that what you post will end up in the public domain - somewhere.
cissystar650
14-03-2008, 06:59
Agree...
The other evening, my Sister rang me to say "OH I see you have a photo of Granddad...why didn't you tell me?" (I had told her... but as she's older she probably forgot :p) According to her I had posted it on "Some Navy Site"... found whilst googling, although why she was googling me I have no idea! :eek:
John Brown
14-03-2008, 08:49
It's very annoying when you are researching something, you Google and it directs you to one of your own posts on that subject:mad:
John
astraltrader
14-03-2008, 14:45
I have had that happen as well JB - still it shows Google is both methodical and efficient!
herakles
14-04-2008, 03:11
I am moving this up to the top again.
Because it's happened again.
astraltrader
14-04-2008, 14:57
Sorry Herk - what did you mean it has happened again? Did you mean that you have seen a slurp spider researching "herakles" - because that probably happens everyday. One day last week when there were over 120 "guests" in the forum of which 80+ were these spiders, I found that no less than 7 were searching my name. I am always seeing them searching yours as well as all the other more prolific posters.
herakles
14-04-2008, 15:03
No mate. I meant that a new member had put his email address in a post.
The other day there were no less than 128 spam bots on-board!
Herk> Is that why we had some problems recently with the site shut down???
No Stan, that was because it appeared that some photos had been removed from somebody's posts. The robots that you will see come here are not spam bots as herakles said. The ones that identify themselves as robots as usually Google, Yahoo or other search engine spiders, which are legitimate and help promote the forum in their search engines. Spam bots will not tell you they are spam bots - they will appear as guests and trawl through all the forum they can get to looking for whatever they are programmed to look for - emails mostly.
I have not seen very many guests I have identified as spambots take an interest in the forum as yet. There are also robots which sign up to forums like this, and we do get a lot of them - probably 50 or so every day. They used to get banned by the moderators and myself, but since I have introduced some screening of new users, only a few are even smart enough to apply to be a member after they are sent the screening email, and they are easily deleted while genuine users get through.
I was the culprit. & I got it now, never knew this could happen, learn something new everyday...............
Bryan
herakles
14-04-2008, 20:59
Well, it was late at night Kc. I meant to say Slurp Spiders but said spambots!
That's ok herk. Just thought I'd spell it out in case our members wrongly thought the place was crawling with nasties. :)
astraltrader
14-04-2008, 23:03
Absolutely right Kc. I also heard that the Yahoo and Google slurp spiders also ensure that their search engines are kept right up to date with the latest information...
herakles
15-04-2008, 00:14
It hardly needs saying that search engines like Google and Yahoo! are invaluable. I understand that they are accessed almost as much as sex sites! So any attempt they make to keep up to date has my blessing.
The only problem - and it's a very big problem - is for the user to decide whether to believe what they read there or not. I guess we've all found instances where what's supplied isn't always accurate. This is particularly true of Wiki I've found.
I hope teachers teach discrimination skills to their students.
To judge by what comes to me as enquiry work in the library - I fear not ...
I was at a conference once and the speaker said that the internet was the best library in the world, thanks to its coverage; and the worst library in the world, thanks to the complete lack of quality control.
herakles
16-04-2008, 00:13
I feel one of the most remarkable features of information gathering on the net has been the rise to prominence of Wikipedia. And how it has eclipsed Britannica.
This is a site that anyone can contribute to and the only control of its accuracy is the editing role other readers perform.
My worry is this: when students hand in work developed with the help of Wiki, are teachers able to assess its accuracy?
I'd also be interested to know how all this has affected the role of traditional libraries.
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