Community Chat

[MacDUFF]

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@Moonchilde wrote:

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@MacDUFF wrote:

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@Moonchilde wrote:

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@MalteseMomma wrote:

@grandma2pkmh

If you are worried about privacy .........lol.......just google your name and you will see

everything you ever posted on this QVC board right there for the whole world to

see...............lol

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Bingo!

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Hi @Moonchilde

I just want to make sure I'm not missing something huge and important here...I googled (well, binged) my name and literally nothing came up for me (I have no cyber footprint and glad of it)...I binged my name, my real name.  If I search for MacDuff, my posts here would come up (assuming).  What am I missing, if anything?

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@dooBdoo, any thoughts about this bizarre glitch?

Oooh, @MacDUFF, that was so weird! About 90 min ago, I could not respond to this post or in this thread (didn't try another thread) in Chrome, Firefox or Safari. My cursor wouldn't appear (physical keyboard OR virtual keyboard) and I literally could not type. Freaky. I almost couldn't now either but I persevered.  

To respond to your comment - it is possible of course not to have an internet footprint in your real name if you rarely or never use it online. My real name turns up nothing. A writing nom de plume I used does show up, but since it's been since the late 1990s-early 2000s that I was active, the mentions are only a handful.

MalteseMomma and I were both speaking of a person's QVC identity being "out there" with posts - I see them all the time. Back when google had an active search engine for forums and discussion groups you could search for any username in just about any forum; they no longer have that function.

I also believe that both of us were indicating that if you *have* an online presence, i.e. If you've left any "real identity" footprints anywhere, it's not just FB where you would be visible but anywhere you'd exposed yourself as "you", information about you could be collated - not just FB - i.e. once again, FB is not the one and only big bad villain invading everyone's privacy.

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@Moonchilde

Okay...I think...lol.  I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something because MM told grandma that she just had to google her "name" and everything she had ever posted here would be available for the world to see.   Since we were talking about privacy, that seemed odd to me, but I didn't think much of it until you responded "bingo," which made me think I might be missing something.  Now that I've complicated the whole matter LOL, I figure MM meant if grandma googled her QVC "screen name" all her posts come up, which they do, but this doesn't necessarily compromise her privacy.   Clear as mud, eh?  

[Moonchilde]

@MacDUFF, that depends on the person - people have different definitions of "private", and people share WIDELY varying amounts and types of personal info on these forums; many people share too much, too often, IMO - not in the sense that it bothers ME, but it can and often does come back to bite them in the tush and they get upset at responses to what can be viewed by others as their soap opera. IMO they might start to think a little more about just how much and how often they share as a contributing factor. The less one says, the less there is to find.

It is also true that for many if not most people there IS some trace of the "real them" using any of the various "finding" sites, because those are all pulled from public records. If you own a house, vote, have been in court and quite a few other things that are a matter of public record, these sites know your name, age and who lives in the house with you, and where you live - and that's for free; if you pay these sites they'll give you all public record details on someone. It's *possible* that there is no record of an individual, but not likely.