Come on guys & girls...fill-in your details!

[bluedragon]

As a regular (but recent) particpant if the forum, I'm surprised by the number of other users that have little if any information in their profiles. It's helpful to know who's who, their background, other interests, type of boat, location, etc. I know there is a culture of anonymity online in general, but we're not some dodgy chatroom are we!! In the last few months I haven't got any hate mail, death threats, nasty phone calls or my identity stolen. I'd be happy if someone looks-up who I am and calls by the boat some time to say "hello"...so what's the problem?? Seriously...is there one?? I'd like to know if there is.

[Shanty]

My theory is that this forum is inhabited by a group of spotty teenaged nerds pretending to be yotties. Hence no profiles that might give them away.

Then, of course, there are others who are just very, very shy.

[BrendanS]

I've demonstrated several times, how given just a simple detail like a boat name, I can discover where the boat is kept, the owners home address, telephone number, his real name, his wifes name, his business dealings, company turnover etc etc

And it's remarkably easy to do. It depends how comfortable you are with this information being accessible I guess.

[knewboater]

Does what you say Brendan tell us not to fill in our details or what? I have mentioned this subject before on this forum but was told that most forumites are in fact sailors or interested in sailing,according to your research.

[BrendanS]

I don't think you have much to worry about from the people who post here. Many people off the forums meet quite regularly, and that's a totally separate discussion.


All I'm saying is be careful what you put in your profile. Anyone (not a poster or forumite) can trawl through the posts, and look for people who have announced they are off sailing with the family for the weekend, or going on holiday for 2 weeks. If someone with malicious intent then had the ability to find the home addresses of those people........

[bluedragon]

[ QUOTE ]
I've demonstrated several times, how given just a simple detail like a boat name, I can discover where the boat is kept, the owners home address, telephone number, his real name, his wifes name, his business dealings, company turnover etc etc

And it's remarkably easy to do. It depends how comfortable you are with this information being accessible I guess.

[/ QUOTE ]

The only thing you can't get from the BT phone directory is my boat name. I don't see how that gives a better starting point to currupt my life!

[BrendanS]

You can only look someone up in the phone directory, if you know roughly where they live, or have an unusual name, as a general rule.

If you want to provide all that info, then fair enough, but not everyone does.

[Ohdrat]

Boat name search on the ITU site gives owners name...

[Mike21]

At present anybody can view your profile, not just registered users.
Doing a websearch of your username will pull up your profile
Think if that info was only available to registered users then people might post a bit more info

[BrendanS]

I don't see why making profiles available to registered users only should make any difference. If someone wants that info, then they can register easily enough, with very little way of finding out who they are - it just needs a temporary email address