Bots

cooby
Jun 10 2016 12:42 PM

Should I be concerned about these bots? I say things here because I figure it is a fairly private forum; sure, people can read it if they don't join but I worry that the bots are putting stuff on search engines. That's a whole different ballgame.

Benjamin Grimm
Jun 10 2016 01:15 PM
Re: Bots

I'm not sure what you mean. Our posts are, and have always been, searchable in Google and other search engines. For example, if someone were to Google "What shows does cooby watch with her granddaughter?" they'd probably see the post that you made yesterday.

But as long as you don't post your real name, address, e-mail address, or any other private information, whatever anyone reads should still be anonymous.

Does that answer your question?

cooby
Jun 10 2016 01:38 PM
Re: Bots

Yeah it does to some extent. THat's why I'm careful with identities. I just worry though that if I post a picture of one of my grandkids, or kids, one of the bots will throw it on some picture search engine, even without an indentity

Benjamin Grimm
Jun 10 2016 02:10 PM
Re: Bots

I can only speak for myself, but I never post a photo here of myself, my kids, or anyone else that I know personally. I never post my name, my kids' names, my hometown, my employer, or anything like that.

I know others haven't been as concerned about this stuff as I have, and I can't say for sure whether or not it matters. You just have to find whatever your comfort level is.

Ceetar
Jun 10 2016 03:14 PM
Re: Bots

Benjamin Grimm wrote:
I can only speak for myself, but I never post a photo here of myself, my kids, or anyone else that I know personally. I never post my name, my kids' names, my hometown, my employer, or anything like that.

I know others haven't been as concerned about this stuff as I have, and I can't say for sure whether or not it matters. You just have to find whatever your comfort level is.

I fall on the other side of the spectrum. I just can't deal with the headache of trying to keep everything 'safe' beyond the level of tweeting "Hey, going away for the weekend, here's my address, jewelry is on the bathroom cubboard" Especially because I know it's generally not secure and there's very little I can do about it besides altering my life and enjoyment of the internet and modern society.

But yeah, just gotta do whatever you feel comfortable with. That said, I think this forum is pretty low-level in terms of being crawled and cached. I just googled some phrases i've used here in the last week and nothing, even with using Ceetar in the search. If I type Ceetar David Wright into google I get nothing that directs here. I have a google alert setup that emails me for web results matching 'Ceetar' and I never get them for here. Even if I add my real name to the search. Mostly tweets and links to tweets on blogs.

d'Kong76
Jun 11 2016 02:22 AM
Re: Bots

We had like 100 bots on the old place; well, maybe 75 but there were a lot.

cooby
Jun 11 2016 02:02 PM
Re: Bots

It does seem bot freer here

Benjamin Grimm
Jun 11 2016 03:10 PM
Re: Bots

I think that's because it's a new domain, and there are probably few (if any) external sites that point here. I think that's also why recent posts aren't showing up in Google search results.