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Closing your account. Why?

beks101

I've noticed this is a common thing.
Often among posters who have racked up thousands of posts over years and really 'established' themselves in certain forums. They have 'friends', engage in daily chat, make smart and funny posts.
Then out of nowhere: CLOSED ACCOUNT.

I don't get it. Do they just burn out, get sick of spending so much time on a message board and decide to try out the real world for a while? Or is it a privacy issue, do they feel they have 'revealed too much'?

I've been around here for quite a while. Sometimes I disappear for weeks because life gets busy, other times I post and browse and thank posts far too frequently than probably is normal....but I've never considered closing my account. I like having a boards identity that no-one in the real world knows about (I think...). I like expressing my opinions on stuff and sometimes having my mind changed. I like looking over posts that I wrote sometimes, in a sense they've sort of chronicled the adventures I've had over the last few years.

So what's up with it? Do they just all come back and re-reg? Or do they just disappear into the ether?

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WilyCoyote

beks101 wrote: »

Who's Mike65? Did he end up in rehab for boards addiction?

No, not as far as we can tell. But we DO know ........he climbed to the top of his laptop and jumped off.

jimgoose

While I'm here, I've been on the Internet a long time, sometimes under my real name. I'm not all that arsed about strict anonymity. It's the Internet, kids - be neither arsehole nor overly-sensitive, neither is particularly useful. These days, as well as hanging around the bike sheds on the Motors forum, I am best known as the weird guy outside in the bushes in the Boardsmarriage of Whoopsie and Renegade Mechanic.

WilyCoyote

Deleted User wrote: »

There's plenty more methods than just the aul IP

DNA taken from virtual fingering?

ToddyDoody

The threat of libel is also a good reason to close your account

[Deleted User]

WilyCoyote wrote: »

DNA taken from virtual fingering?

Have you ever been virtually fingered?

Aint Eazy Being Cheezy

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Have you ever been virtually fingered?

Or digitally?

[Deleted User]

Duracell Bunny wrote: »

Or digitally?

Isn't that a redundancy

tomwaterford

Calibos wrote: »

Personal Identifiability would be a big one as others have pointed out already.

There was a thread recently about cruel parents giving their kids unusual first names. A female poster jokingly took faux offence to her name being one of the mentioned names. So now her first name was a known quantity. The thing was though, that her Boards name was also an obvious derivation of a well known Surname. Now one knew her full name. I googled it and 'Ireland' out of interest to see if anything would come up. A linkedIN profile was the top google result. Now there was a possible career attachable to that name. Curiousity got the better of me in terms of "Could it really be this easy to identify this boardsie?" I clicked on their post boards history. Not a prolific poster so it was easy to see that she had a fair few posts giving advice to people in a forum directly related to the career field of the LinkedIn profile I'd found.

Holy ****. I now knew the name of this boardsie, knew what she looked like. Knew where she worked, knew the schools and colleges she went to etc etc.

Then that put me in a predicament. Do I say nothing in which case others might be able to identify her, or do I PM her and suggest that maybe she remove the posts in that name thread that were the key to unlocking her real life identity, but at the risk of her thinking I was a weird stalker weirdo or something. I chose the latter and PM'd her and by her reply tbh I think she thought I was a weirdo alright.

When I replied back trying to put her mind at ease that I wasn't a freak or online stalker and explained my rationale for researching and telling her, I think I ended up digging a deeper hole for myself

As a matter of interest, what would other boardsies have done? Had you realised you now knew First and Last name of a fellow boardsie, could you have resisted the curiosity to see how far you could get in identifying them. Would you have had any curiosity in the first place. If you had managed to identify them with information that they themselves had put on boards, would you tell them/warn them that they had put too much information out there?

that was a bit creepy tbf
if twoz me...id just say nothing....why bother going to effort to identify someone??

beks101

Calibos wrote: »

Personal Identifiability would be a big one as others have pointed out already.

There was a thread recently about cruel parents giving their kids unusual first names. A female poster jokingly took faux offence to her name being one of the mentioned names. So now her first name was a known quantity. The thing was though, that her Boards name was also an obvious derivation of a well known Surname. Now one knew her full name. I googled it and 'Ireland' out of interest to see if anything would come up. A linkedIN profile was the top google result. Now there was a possible career attachable to that name. Curiousity got the better of me in terms of "Could it really be this easy to identify this boardsie?" I clicked on their post boards history. Not a prolific poster so it was easy to see that she had a fair few posts giving advice to people in a forum directly related to the career field of the LinkedIn profile I'd found.

Holy ****. I now knew the name of this boardsie, knew what she looked like. Knew where she worked, knew the schools and colleges she went to etc etc.

Hardly that big of a revelation in fairness. I can spend a sizeable portion of my day doing this kind of thing, I'm a journalist and it's a common media thing. Finding victims of some such disaster and/or their relatives, rooting out case studies from a single quote and a first and last name in an old newspaper article. It's ABC stuff. Incredibly easy to find someone in this facebook age.

The question is, as you quite rightly put it, does anyone actually give enough of a crap to go to the effort of it? And what are you going to do with that information?

I had a brief foray into online dating back during my single days and had a few lads suss out my identity from the snippets of information I gave them over a few brief conversations. A bit :eek::eek::eek: but it's not like they arrived on my doorstep wielding a knife or anything...they just could tell me where I was from and where I worked. Mental. But the world we live in.

The One Who Knocks

I'm tempted to close but at the same time some part of me would like to come back in 50 years from now and be some sort of ancient boards god haha.

Johro

Micky Dolenz wrote: »

Stalking is snow joke.

Wow that's embarrassing. I would re-reg right now if I were you, from shame ;P

Renegade Mechanic

jimgoose wrote: »

While I'm here, I've been on the Internet a long time, sometimes under my real name. I'm not all that arsed about strict anonymity. It's the Internet, kids - be neither arsehole nor overly-sensitive, neither is particularly useful. These days, as well as hanging around the bike sheds on the Motors forum, I am best known as the weird guy outside in the bushes in the Boardsmarriage of Whoopsie and Renegade Mechanic.

:eek: Now, hang on a second! :eek:

CarrickMcJoe

Banjo String wrote: »

Agh..... Me an my big mouth.

It's started again. 8 pics so far this evening. Put em away girls

Hahahahaha especially when one of them is auldgranny, shudder......

engineerbrah

Because 'doxing' (exposing real life information of supposedly anonymous posters) people is easy and many close their account to make this harder for internet detectives.
Reading through a person's post history you can find out so much about them.
People reveal tiny bits of info about themselves every now and again like where they went to college, where they grew up, what type of job they have, age, gender etc.
An internet detective can have a full description of an on-line person who is supposedly anonymous. Then with the help of Google you can have a Facebook or Name in 10-20mins.

Most posts on this website are PC as mods are strict so it wont matter to many if real life peers can see their post history but can you imagine a professional person being doxed on a website like stormfront or a pervert forum of some sort. The consequences can be disastrous. Lose your job, friends, wife maybe, fukk knows could possibly even get into legal trouble over things you say.

I've seen people get dectectived on other forums and have their lives ruined. On any forum I post on, I only troll and never post real life stories. I also post through a proxy so keyboard warriors cant get my IP.

beks101

engineerbrah wrote: »

I've seen people get dectectived on other forums and have their lives ruined. On any forum I post on, I only troll and never post real life stories. I also post through a proxy so keyboard warriors cant get my IP.

Which other forums?
Sounds a tad paranoid to me.

Czarcasm

beks101 wrote: »

Which other forums?
Sounds a tad paranoid to me.

He's a bra engineer, I'd be paranoid too

Hotfail.com

beks101 wrote: »

Which other forums?
Sounds a tad paranoid to me.

It's possible but I doubt it ever happens that much unless there's some absolute psycho looking for information on you or if the guards believed you were up to no good.

Fred Swanson

This post has been deleted.

engineerbrah

beks101 wrote: »

Which other forums?
Sounds a tad paranoid to me.

I've seen it on bodybuilding.com. The miscellaneous section which has nothing got to do with bodybuilding attracts many trolls. Basically people who post embarrassing stuff about them dont realise they have face pics on other threads and what not and have had their families notified.
Also a few girls on that websites got their nudes sent to their work and family. Reverse image searching can make these things easy.

Hotfail.com wrote: »

It's possible but I doubt it ever happens that much unless there's some absolute psycho looking for information on you or if the guards believed you were up to no good.

You have to understand there is a lot of people in this world and a lot of them with nothing to do other than have a bit of fun online. I dont know if I'd call them psychos, some of these guys may take offence to posts you made or its a deeper race/hate thing. Doxing people isnt uncommon at all, especially for people with 'well known online persona's'.

Muahahaha

Was meaning to re-reg my last account for ages as I no longer liked the name. But I never bothered till a friend recognised me online here so I re-reged then, I don't really know why but I was just uncomfortable with a friend reading everything I might post here and me not knowing how much they know.

I'll prob re reg again soon too, still don't like the username !

Roquentin

the mechanics of online chatting is different to real life chatting, well it is for me. Because we all have pseudo identities or alias's on here or any forum for that matter, what we say basically means nothing unless its defamation and you use someones name.

We may all be in different countries and what not. This is not the same as an face to face conversation

Wishiwasa Littlebitaller

Muahahaha wrote: »

I'll prob re reg again soon too, still don't like the username !

Spend the fiver ya tight feck! :P

Plus you can then use any image as an avatar.

auldgranny

CarrickMcJoe wrote: »

Hahahahaha especially when one of them is auldgranny, shudder......

Oy, who has been passing around them topless pictures of mine.... They were for banjo string only.

Sciprio

I lurk in the shadows. Watching, Waiting...

I hope ye all are creeped out now!

fleet_admiral

Sciprio wrote: »

I lurk in the shadows. Watching, Waiting...

I hope ye all are creeped out now!

nope

s8n

Looking for attention - plain and simple. The whole mike65 thing is an example.

jimgoose

Renegade Mechanic wrote: »

:eek: Now, hang on a second! :eek:

I mean no harm, for I am a benevolent head-case!

kowloon

It's a little weird when you know people are reading your posts and know who you are but you don't know them.

auldgranny

kowloon wrote: »

It's a little weird when you know people are reading your posts and know who you are but you don't know them.

That happen you?

porsche959

Hotfail.com wrote: »

It's possible but I doubt it ever happens that much unless there's some absolute psycho looking for information on you or if the guards believed you were up to no good.

I have seen it, as an observer, more in the blogosphere than forums though.

Did you ever hear of the north Wales care home abuse scandal? It was a scandal that was exposed in the early 1990s, and more recently in the wake of the investigations into the late Jimmy Savile, police investigations have re-opened.

Basically a rather nasty feud has developed on blogs and twitter between two former north Wales care home residents, each say the other is out to get them and each accuses the other of making up false claims of abuse to get compensation or to get media access. Each has their own little gang of supporters who will try and harvest and publish on the net private info about the other lot.

Both have been arrested in the past year or so due to claims of harassment the other has made against them, all rather nasty.

Mind you this is also a "real life" situation rather than just internet trolling so perhaps not the best example.