Personal Safety: A reminder for forum participants

We've recently received an email from a forum member expressing concern regarding the potential for stalkers to use information found on the forums to target women. That prompted us to issue this reminder of "best practices" for participating in public spaces (like these forums) on the internet:

- Avoid disclosing personally identifiable information either in your profile or in your posts. This includes full name, street address, phone number and email address.
- Those individuals wishing to exercise an abundance of caution should also consider avoiding using their photo as their avatar, or posting identifiable pictures of their car / bike / house.
- Always keep in mind that the forums are a public space and *everything* you post can be read by *anyone*, indefinitely. It is hard, if not impossible, to fully "erase" something you've posted - it could have been indexed by a search engine or cut-n-paste by someone and posted somewhere else.

While we have absolutely no reason to believe that anyone has ever been targeted via participation on the Team Estrogen forums, we nonetheless feel it is prudent to remind everyone to be cautious and protect their personal information.

Thanks Susan for looking out for us!

One thing I also do is make sure my rides (on places like Plus3 and Motionbased) are marked "private" if I've started from my house.

Thanks for making this a sticky. It has crossed my mind a few times recently.

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Originally Posted by Pedal Wench

Thanks Susan for looking out for us!

One thing I also do is make sure my rides (on places like Plus3 and Motionbased) are marked "private" if I've started from my house.

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+1, or alternately, start the track from a public place near your home. I live about a mile from a school, so I use that as the start/finish for bike loops that I create.

Also, if you post pictures of yourself in an event, don't forget to fuzz out the number on your race bib.

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Originally Posted by Pedal Wench

Thanks Susan for looking out for us!

One thing I also do is make sure my rides (on places like Plus3 and Motionbased) are marked "private" if I've started from my house.

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This is a good sticky. Sad, but true, the world has it's share of crazies. Thx for this point about the routes. I had some on-line as well, locked private, but it sorta freaks me out the more I think about it. Delete for me. Too bad things in the world are this way *sigh*.

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Originally Posted by Pedal Wench

Thanks Susan for looking out for us!

One thing I also do is make sure my rides (on places like Plus3 and Motionbased) are marked "private" if I've started from my house.

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I consider mapping rides (or mapping locations and addresses in general) a very unsafe practice. Not to scare anyone - but really we have no idea what kind of creeps are out there lurking on the web.
My ex-boyfriend used to map rides and stuff, and unfortunately it proved to be a very bad idea. He now shares his experience with everybody as a warning - especially for parents, given the widespread use of twitter etc among teenagers.
Here is his story: he was on MySpace at the time, and he had posted some information there about his rides and links to the websites with his online cycling stats - so that his friends could see them. He is also a very social person so he had the tendency to approve everyone who asked to be friends on myspace - regardless whether he really knew those people or not. Well, at some point he attracted a creep that stalked him online and in real life. This woman befriended him on MySpace talking about the sports he liked, and pretending that they had met at some workshop. Then she started showing up at his rides, and following him here and there. She would look up his mapped rides and randomly appear everywhere, and just go talk to him or hang out with his group of friends. One day she showed up with water and stuff at a triathlon he was signed up for. After that he got completely freaked out and he told me about the whole story - which of course I had no idea about, since we were living in different States.
At that point I decided to intervene, and basically told him that he had to disappear from the internet, change riding club, change routes, etc. He closed his MySpace and all of his online cycling and triathlon logins, he cancelled his public email accounts - and had to start all over. Lesson learned - he now opens his accounts with a nickname, and makes most of his info private so that he only gives access to his real friends.
The sad part is that of course his stalker already knew most of his favorite rides, and so he also had to change his usual places to ride, and explain the situation to his riding buddies, etc. All in all it was a big headache.
Of course I am the polar opposite - I don't even use my real name on Facebook where everyone else does :D And I'm one of those people with unlisted #s, everything under nicknames, and so on. Yes, I admit that I am a little paranoid about security in general - but I worked threat assessment for years before studying medicine, and I have seen too many stories with unhappy endings.
And so my two cents is - to Susan: thank you for bringing up this topic, and to everyone else: please be careful and take no chances!

I was doing pretty good iwith the identity thing until i got my name on the front page of the NYTimes. :eek:
Hopefully not too many bad guys READ the NYTIMES.

maybe TE could delete the "getting to know you thread" since it contains a lot of personal info and people forget to be discrete since it seems like such a safe environment,

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Originally Posted by tribogota

maybe TE could delete the "getting to know you thread" since it contains a lot of personal info and people forget to be discrete since it seems like such a safe environment,

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or allow people to edit their own profile.

And not ask the question about posting personal pic.

I appreciate this thread on knowing at least which geographic area and age range the woman is in. It's helpful to know vaguely the general membership composition of TE forum group. I agree that exact location details on ride routes etc. is not critical. More about the weather conditions, grade, distance, terrain is more meaningful to us as cyclists when we don't know each other's specific geographic location details.

I have requested people /newbies who might sound a bit "strange" to go there to introduce themselves. Sort of a minor accountability thing to our group.

Thank you. I try to be discrete, but this a good reminder.

Thanks for the reminder!

didn't think I was guilty of giving out too much info then I read TxDoc's msg.

hmm. realized I have posted my route on bikely.com and shows where I start and end. AT MY HOUSE. Guess better go and delete the route.

Thanks

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Originally Posted by smilingcat

didn't think I was guilty of giving out too much info then I read TxDoc's msg.

hmm. realized I have posted my route on bikely.com and shows where I start and end. AT MY HOUSE. Guess better go and delete the route.

Thanks

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You might be able to keep it, just make it private. Then you can load it, or send a link to folks you know. That's what I do on Motionbased

Yep, I tend to put rides on Bikely that start from a major intersection or other obvious starting point a couple of miles from my home. I know how to ride there from house. :cool:

And on Plus 3 any ride that I start from my home I list as "private".

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Originally Posted by tribogota

maybe TE could delete the "getting to know you thread" since it contains a lot of personal info and people forget to be discrete since it seems like such a safe environment,

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Is there a way to make the 'Getting to Know You' thread private to members only?

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Originally Posted by OakLeaf

+1, or alternately, start the track from a public place near your home. I live about a mile from a school, so I use that as the start/finish for bike loops that I create.

Also, if you post pictures of yourself in an event, don't forget to fuzz out the number on your race bib.

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Along those lines, if you post a photo of your car, blurring out your license plate would also be a good idea.

In this vein, is there a way to change our username without losing everything?

You'll have to PM an administrator to do that.

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Originally Posted by cunninghamair

In this vein, is there a way to change our username without losing everything?

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You will show up with the same post count but a new name. Keep your avatar so you won't confuse us all! :p

To add to this for people who own their own web domains - keep in mind that your domain ownership info is available online to everyone, unless you pay a company that does private domains (the company's info will appear in place of yours).

I own quite a few domains and post a lot of photos and info online, so I pay for a PO Box and list my PO Box as my address for all my domains. It's cheaper than paying for a private listing for each of my domains, and gives me a mailing address for anything where I don't want to give my home address.

yeah do a whois for my website; "mimitabby.com"
doesn't tell you much. :cool:

What about meeting up with people you find on TE to go biking together? Any advice on that?

Oh, by the way Biciclista, I like your watercolors! I'm an artist too:)

PM's or private email

oh boy.

eep.

*thwaps forehead* :o

What about geotaging? Anyone read this article on the NYTimes today?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/te...e&ref=homepage

Who knew that pictures taken with a "smart" phone (iPhone, Blackberry etc) contain a tag that shows your exact latitude/longitude via a "geotag" embedded in the photo? Post them here or in any other website and, presto, your exact location pops up to knowleadgable (or devious) people.

Scary!

Thanks for the link! I tested a Facebook pic that I had taken with a GPS and, as the article said, FB strips the EXIF info. I'll sure keep that in mind though for other sites I may post to.

While I do like to keep all my handles, e-mails, and avatars separate for most of the different boards I'm on, I've only ever had one account for posting photos (photobucket, but it could be anything). I recently found out, since my account name was a unique non-sense word, that if you google it EVERY site I have ever posted a picture on pops up. Everything.

I would suggest googling your e-mail address, user name, and any image upload accounts you have to see what pops up. If you aren't comfortable with it (I sure wasn't!) change it to something more common. My new photobucket account is Candoia - like my user name here, the only thing google will regurgitate is snakes.

I was once able to find out someones exact birthday by googling their e-mail address. They had used the same e-mail to sign up to an equestrian board where they posted their exact dob. They hadn't even visited the site in years. The internet is forever....

The internet is indeed forever...and thanks for the reminder. I just searched for the two main email addresses I use and am fine with that I found. This is one of the reason I removed myself from most actual email subscription years ago, those things stay forever and a day.

Not long ago I searched my name on one of the popular free background check sites and it returned the address of someone I used to know, the friendship did not end well. I think perhaps the reason my name is associated with his address is that my ex-husband may have co-signed for a credit card for him. :rolleyes: :eek: It really creeped me out.

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Originally Posted by Groundhog

What about geotaging? Anyone read this article on the NYTimes today?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/te...e&ref=homepage

Who knew that pictures taken with a "smart" phone (iPhone, Blackberry etc) contain a tag that shows your exact latitude/longitude via a "geotag" embedded in the photo? Post them here or in any other website and, presto, your exact location pops up to knowleadgable (or devious) people.

Scary!

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That’s a good warning! It’s easy to turn off geotagging on camera phones if someone feels the need. On the iphone it’s, settings, privacy, location services…off. For my digital photos I also export images out of Lightroom with no metadata location info attached.