WHY ISNT THIS PRIVATE

cp2000

rentboy

@MrMazda The thing that most concerns me about this is that since the same usernames are used for both the tracker and the forum, this in effect reveals a possibly meaningful item of information most users shouldn't want made public, especially if they've signed up for several trackers under the same nick.

Given what's apparently just happened to Gay-Area.org, a little more caution might not be amiss.

cp2000

@rentboy trust me in this crazyass world that is just one of many concerns people should have about this forum being open to the public to crawl. its just unnesscessary and we should have the comfort of a private community conversation together. There should be many privacy concerns for anyone participating.

If people on the outside cant read it, then who gives a fuck, they can join if they really want to participate.

MrMazda

@rentboy If you are concerned about what may be tied back to you due to copyright trolls, then the only thing I would suggest is to not post anything that would tie you to having uploaded or downloaded a torrent.

Keep in mind that making a comment thanking a user for having uploaded a torrent is not evidence that you have downloaded said torrent. Also, on comments you make on your own torrents, to anyone other than staff, your username does not appear, but rather you show up as "Uploader".

If another site gets compromised, any information from that site is likely already in their hands, so nothing from this site could be used to do any damage beyond what has already been done from the other site.

cp2000

@MrMazda this right here is exactly what I'm talking about this is enough to make me quit this entire site.... Privacy should be a right that should be automatic and not something you should have to worry about. What an awful answer. You basically gave the same exact answer as Steve Schmidt from Google gave.. "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place," Schmidt said in a 2009 CNBC.... All of you that don't respect privacy on this site that have created a site to share P2P and for some reason don't understand and respect privacy in it's most extreme necessary terms as a site like this then fuck you seriously fuck you

ianfontinell

@cp2000 i have already reported that with the new site, no uploaded is anonymous, even using the strongest privacy setting, because the current framework used to allow uploaders to be contacted exposes their nickname.

We are going from "you are not allowed to place any identifiable information in torrent details" to "anyone can see who you are and contact you" and it's really annoying.

I'm not as worried about the forum being public, I really don't see how it could pose any danger granted that I am 100% anonymous in the main site, but that's not the case anymore, I really hate that.

Kevin4fm

As far as the forum is concerned, should the question not be simply "What is the benefit of this forum being public?"

To my mind that it may be common practice elsewhere is not a good reason. I was extremely pleased when I finally got forum access recently. However, until this thread I was unaware that the forum isn't protected by "Member Only" access. Now that I am aware, and need to self-censor what I say in case I inadvertently say something that exposes me to risk, I'll need to rethink my participation.

MrMazda

@cp2000 There's only one problem... In the digital age, privacy is a myth. Literally anything on the internet (whether it's public or not) can be subjected to a subpoena by the courts. So regardless of whether or not it's private makes ZERO difference to the ability of the legal system to obtain it through a subpoena process.

I'll bet you didn't even know that the same applies to things like medical records, which are supposed to be held with the strictest of confidentiality.

Kevin4fm

@MrMazda Does the granting of a subpoena not require 'probable cause'? Allowing public access to the forum will likely be the basis of a 'probable cause' subpoena for the main site's records. Even if making the forum 'Members Only' only makes something like that only marginally less likely, that's still lowering the risk.

And that argument does nothing to address the question of what benefits are there to it being public. If there are none, it should surely be private.

MrMazda

@Kevin4fm You would think, but in one particular case that I'm intimately familiar with, all that it took for someone (me) to get arrested, sent straight to jail, denied bail, and have things like medical records subject to a subpoena was literally nothing more than a verbal allegation alone with absolutely ZERO physical evidence.

What's worse about that particular case is that I absolutely did NOT do what I was accused of, but despite the overwhelming evidence to support my innocence, the verbal allegation alone was all that was needed to sink me. Now, many years later, I have finally been granted a pardon, as the Parole Board of Canada finally acknowledged that both in relation to the charges against me, as well as everything that has been submitted to them since, there was (and I quote) "insufficient evidence of criminal activity".

So just because it should, in theory, require some sort of substance to the claim being made, this is not always the case.

As for the benefits of the forum being visible to public search engines, the biggest benefit that I can think of is it makes content such as help and how to's that are in the forum more easily searchable, even if our internal search of the forum does not yield the results you are looking for. So simply put, it makes answers to common problems more easily searchable and accessible.

MrMazda

@ianfontinell Actually, we're working on a workaround to that with the new inbox system so that if you upload a torrent and someone sends you a PM from the torrent page, your username only becomes known to that user if you choose to respond to the PM.

ianfontinell

@MrMazda what about the torrent page, don't you think the uploader's name should be hidden regardless of their privacy preferences?

MrMazda

@ianfontinell As far as I am aware, the uploader of any torrent (regardless of their privacy settings) is only visible to staff. Regular users and public search indexes will only see "Anonymous"

ianfontinell

@MrMazda i ask because until just a few days ago, it was public, only users with "strong" privacy would appear as anonymous. So it is that the current labels still reflect this behavior:

I'd like to take the opportunity to ask about this one:

Why is everything limited to unreasonable numbers now?

MrMazda

@ianfontinell Interesting... Let me hop onto my regular user account so I can test this theory to see what shows up from a regular user account.

EDIT: I just hopped onto my regular user account, and it doesn't seem to matter what the user's privacy settings are set to... If you only have a regular user account, you can only see the name of the uploader if you click the button to send the uploader a message. This will soon change. I'm not sure if we're going to remove the button, or change it so that the uploader is only revealed if they respond to the PM, but either way, it will be addressed.

MrMazda

Another thing worth noting....

Functionally, there is NO difference between "Low" and "Strong" for your privacy settings. Regardless of your settings, you will be shown as "Anonymous" to other users on all torrents. The only thing that becomes visible to other users if they look at your profile on the "Normal" setting is your ratio information such as overall ratio, upload/download totals, and SBP information.

Regardless of what privacy setting you choose, your torrent history is NOT visible to anyone other than staff. The only real difference between "Low" or "Strong" and "Normal" aside from overall ratio and SBP information is that if you have it set to "Normal", other users can see the button to PM you, add you to friends, or add you to blocks.

EDIT: Just to give you a visual, with my account, I have my setting set on "Normal" so that other users can PM me directly if they need assistance. When on "Normal", this is what my profile will appear as for a regular user.

The only "damaging" (for lack of a better term) info that is shown to other users when on "Normal" mode is my ratio, as well as my upload/download totals. Under Canadian law though, this is hardly "damning" information, as this does not link to any specific torrent, so it cannot (at least in Canada) be used as evidence that any given torrent was downloaded and/or shared in full.

Just to further provide an example, even with my profile security set to "Normal", when viewed from a regular user account, my information does NOT appear anywhere for other users, even if I comment on my own torrents.

See... I show as "Anonymous", even though my security settings are set to "Normal".

And when I put a test comment on my torrent, it shows to a normal user like this...

For the current moment, the only time my username on a torrent will appear to other users if if they use the button to send the uploader a PM, but as I said, that is soon going to change, I'm just not sure how.

So even with your profile set to "Normal", there is nothing (outside of the send uploader a PM button) that will show my username attached to any torrent I have uploaded, even with my security settings set to "Normal".

Kevin4fm

@ianfontinell I too thought uploader names were being displayed when I first used the new format site. However, after a while I realised the only time a name was displayed was when I was looking at a torrent I'd uploaded myself. There it showed my username.

Maybe there was a short period where this wasn't the case, but I've just checked the latest top eight uploads, and they all show as "Anonymous". Admittedly this isn't a huge sample, but since noticing my name as the torrent uploader on one, I've been checking most of the torrents I've opened to view the detail albeit often 'unconsciously'.

So if it was a problem, it seems to have been a short lived one that has since been corrected.

Perhaps if others see their name and make the same assumption, a simple fix would be to display "You" as the uploader, rather than your username.

ianfontinell

@Kevin4fm No, they were in fact being displayed. The privacy options used to work exactly like their description suggests. I only brought it up in this conversation because I didn't notice it had changed. But I'm 200% sure it was showing uploader names, I'm glad it was revised.