The public nature of the Acronis forums
Recently a technically interesting thread was deleted from an ATI forum when the original poster discovered the posting were viewable on the web. He thought forum discussions were private. I believe it was the publication of his name rather than the contents of the postings that bothered him.
Are we notified of the public nature of the forum when we register? (I'm sure I didn't bother reading any privacy statement, but someone concerned might read it.) At the very least, it might be good to highlight that the registered name will be public and that an anonymous handle will protect privacy. (It works. I have no idea who Enchantech really is.)
Steve, I think the forum's TOU page is sort of like a typical software EULA - people agree to it without reading it. And I don't see anything mentioning that the forum postings are accessible to people not logged on. This, I believe, was misunderstood by JR yesterday when he thought this was a private forum. I certainly don't want this to be a private forum, but it might be good to have the public nature more obvious.
Mostly, I'm frustrated that an interesting thread got pulled because the OP misunderstood how the forum worked.
And by the way, thank you for the time you spent working on that thread's problem. I wish we could be informed when he finds the root cause of the problem.
Patrick, I think that the Acronis Forums, like many others from other companies cannot be mistaken for being anything but public, where anyone can do a simple Google search and find hits but where the ability to post to the forums requires registration.
I have visited quite a lot of forums over the years but have only registered with a few of those when I wanted to seek an answer for an issue or to respond to a question.
I understand the frustration when interesting topics get deleted and links give 'Access denied' or 'Page not found' when you try to follow them!
Patrick, I think that the Acronis Forums, like many others from other companies cannot be mistaken for being anything but public
I would think that, too, but that was obviously not the case. An Acronis user is now upset that "my name is all over the web".
Not sure that there is much more to say on this topic Patrick. My own name & yours is also all over the web by the same definition - this has not caused me any issues that I am aware of. I try not to disclose any personal information that could be used in conjunction with my name. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter etc is a far greater risk for the majority of people, especially when they do not lock down their profiles for such sites then tell the world what they had for breakfast, dinner and tea!