Should there be something done about it to hide this site from search engines such a google?
Why would you share your steam account name with your boss in the first place?
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So he can see I'm clearly Middle Management material.
I may not start a lot of games but I try to 100% those that I do.
Thankfully this made some people smile.
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If you were coming in for an interview for a ob from me, you'd be hired on the basis of this comment (provided you meet minimals elsewhere)
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I use this same nickname for everything ever since i was 16, some people will fill their real name on their steam account, alot can be traced back through even the minimal of things, you be surprised how many they can trace back to you and many people neglect that or think it won't go that far.
Certain companies hire another company in to track down and find information on people they might want to hire (and then find your pictures having wild parties on facebook).
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I treat forum names like passwords in that I rarely use the same one twice. To help mix it up, I go to other forums and borrow a name I see there that hasn't been used in a while.
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I wish future employers lots of luck with associating my screen name with my real name, in a way that I can't simply deny.
Don't discuss things you want to remain private on a public site. And yes, SteamGifts is a public site -- no login is required to see any page, except for giveaways. I'm not sure why you want to single out Google here.
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Any search engine, but a majority still uses Google, not?
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Yeah, the point is, if you're really posting things here you wouldn't want a future employer to see, the solution is not to ask the world's biggest search engine not to show that through technical means and hope that that's going to be enough; the solution is not to post it in the first place. Or if you do post it, not to post it with an account that can be traced to your real identity. Or if you do post it under an account that can be traced to your real identity, delete it afterwards. Or if you do post it under an account that can be traced to your real identity and you don't delete it afterwards, to be prepared to deal with the consequences.
But hey, I suppose hiding from Google wouldn't hurt, as such.
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It's like the stuff people post on twitter and facebook too, think it's the same that applies here, not everyone think about such consequences (especially younger people).
But it's also another point, in like people saying "Oh you can read and look up everything from me, i got nothing to hide". Even if you don't say anything bad (or think you do) still not everyone should be able to read it regardless, that's also privacy.
I am not sure how simple it would be to implement it, but if it's not alot of work, then yeah why not?
Then those who vote yes can be happy, and those who vote no, it wouldn't influence them in any way, it won't hurt anyone.
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Please note that I'm definitely not advocating the "I've got nothing to hide" point of view. I myself have got plenty to hide, and in fact, I'm hiding it. :-)
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I can give you a "why not": As SG's search function is pretty useless, I usually rely on Google to find older threads that I vaguely remember.
Why should people use access to this very helpful tool, just because some acted carelessly and regret what they shared? You can't expect every site to care more about your privacy, than you did yourself.
The internet is a public place, that doesn't forget. To teach kids that asap, certainly is the better approach than to hide complete sites, just because some failed to listen.
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Turn it around, why because this site might have a poor search function other people have to give up their privacy over it? The solution for that is a better search, not open google (a company that makes money of everything that is open for anyone to google mind you, including this site) to it.
It's not all that public, you can't post without making an account, an account that has to meet a certain cv requirement.
Beside regardless if you might have said bad things in the past or not, there is still a large group that still demand their privacy as not everything has to be laid out in the open for everyone.
How many kids that aren't thought (how many of them didn't we have here?) but how many adults between us didn't pick "fights" in those political (US Election) and religious (/terrorist attack) threads months ago? A large group.
Not even so much about having someone called a dickhead or whatever but even cases of just being pro or anti muslim, or pro Trump, then it's also about freedom of speech. If some future employer will read it, saying "Oh he believes this or that, i am not hiring him". Some might have that luxury to pick their employers, but some would just be lucky in getting a job at all.
Or someone having admitted he got stoned / using weed (you yourself might not have a problem with it but someone else might).
Or in today's case about someone (that is 21yr) admitting here (which yeah is very unwise) that he cheated, and his girlfriend or someone else will google him and steamgifts is the first site that will show up.
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I made over 52k tweets, among them many political. I don't say that I don't have to hide anything, I say that I stand by what I said. How about that approach? :)
Restrictions about who can create an account, have nothing to do with this being a public or private space. And no site is required to invest into a greater search function, just so that people don't have to fear about their drunken postings.
Sure, you can try to convince cg. But SG is just one tiny part of the web, when your real problem is your lack of self control.
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If you want to post 52k tweets, if people want to post on facebook every damn meal they eat, they should do whatever they want, there are those people, just as there are people that want their privacy (and for the same reason don't tweet, don't post anything on Facebook (i only use it for contests else i wouldn't have a Facebook account either).
A website is not required to do anything, nor is CG required (it's his site) but don't go then "ooh but i need google to search for my stuff" just because a proper search function is missing, and use that as a substitute and let others not give the privacy they want, you are kinda turning around the issue.
It's not (all) about drunken rants, it's about kids, it's about adults (again read my previous posts to those cases) or just not feeling the need of just wanting anyone to read everything you post (even if it's nothing wrong) period, again privacy. Not all about self control, and how often we might have said something totally unaware or you think might not have been harmful but later turns out might have been, just look in real life how often that happen.
Same as it doesn't matter if it's a tiny part of a web, we aren't talking about Twitter or Facebook, we are here, we are talking about this site, in which some of us here are on alot, and the poll atleast shows the opinions are divided on this.
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Your argument makes little sense. For Twitter and Facebook you are all "Oh, that's your own business what you do there!".
What exactly is the difference to SG? How could anyone imagine that this is a more private place than anywhere else on the internet? Why would you want to share stuff, that you might regret, here and not on FB/Twitter?
So yes, it absolutely matters that SG is just a tiny part of the web. Why should we pretend that people, tending to share too much information, would have that problem exclusively on SG? Your suggestion is a drop in the bucket. And a poll won't change that.
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Uhmm because maybe this is a gifting website with a forum and the other two are SOCIAL networks?
Those places where famous and infamous people post about their life, in which you know half find it great and like everything and then the other half that reply with all sorts of trolling and toxic comments.
This site and those are completely different and many people that value their privacy or just don't find it important if someone knows what he/she is doing or eating right now are already for that reason not joining or using those SOCIAL networks, it wouldn't make sense from you if you can't even see those differences.
We aren't discussing nor trying to change the whole internet are we? We are discussing this site, and if I (and a large enough group) can get our privacy here then that group can be happy.
A poll can change it in that fact it can show CG a large enough group cares, wether he does something with it in the end or not, that's up to him. Atleast i tried.
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Uhmmm, forums are platforms for social exchanges, just as much as social networks are. If they were not, you wouldn't have the problem of sharing personal information with strangers. I marvel how you manage to justify to restrict personal responsibility to social networks, but expect a free pass here.
Anyway, I'm out. I wouldn't want some future HR to see me engaged in a pointless debate, right? ;)
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Facebook and Twitter are explicitly designed to post as much crap as you want about your own life, and apart from Jatan who is the only one here posting what he eats every day.
People generally know that, although some would just scratch their head if they would really figure out what those sites know about you and do with your information (especially Facebook, that sells your information, and use your pictures)
People that don't know, because why would Facebook tell you?
This site in it's main goal is a website about giving away games, the forum is just a subpart, not everyone participating in giveaways are also participating in the forums.
The social exchanges differ from site to site, and we tried political ones (and most if not all got closed because they all turned sour..)
People can choose not to join a Facebook or Twitter, and some won't for privacy reasons.
I can't choose to shield my privacy here except by not talking at all, and it's a debate you start, but you are just making an easy statement just because those two sites don't give anything about your privacy whatsoever, then it's basically okay anywhere else too, even here.
We can't ask companies such as Facebook or Twitter they will just laugh in your face, atleast here we have someone that is open to ideas, that's another difference for you.
There is no reason to have things come up in google apart from those few that find it easy to look up things, but again that's a problem with the search function, not a reason for others to give up their privacy.
"Funny", well we clearly differ on opinion and we won't change eachothers mind on it.
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Steamgifts doesn't even have a robots.txt
Everyone start panicking!
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I always agree with privacy defense/respect, but if you hide SG from google how would new recruits come? (I know there are different ways to find SG, but google is probably one of the main ones :s)
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AFAIK when you add for example "Disallow: /discussion/" to the robots.txt, you would hide all forum-posts from google (and all other major engines), but not the rest of SG. Of course this would still hurt the overall visabilitiy of SG on google, but would leave the more important search-terms intact.
I´m not sure how important such a change is to me personally, but when in doubt, I´m always for privacy.
Possible solution: Make a new forum-category named "Private" (for example) and a robots.txt with " "Disallow: /discussion/private/". This way the descision is up to the user.
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Private giveaways are already hidden from search engines. People can create a private giveaway and use it to post their private stuff there (I don't recommend it tho. In internet there is 0 privacy, because, you know, inter-net....).
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Yeah, but that would also conceal it from most of the SG community (and you would of course need a game to give away ;) ).
I think to goal is to enable open and free discussions within the community, without making it too easy for outsiders to stumble upon it.
Thats a bit similar to having a (real-life) talk with some people in a room.. there is no 100% privacy and if outsiders really wants to know what you said, its not impossible to find that out... but thats very different from having the content of the talk pop-up randomly when someone googles you or your username.
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Yeah, but that would also conceal it from most of the SG community
Open a discussion, tell people you want a private discussion and post the url for people to discuss there.
and you would of course need a game to give away ;)
You can create a private giveaway for 1 hour, not telling anyone the url, no winners. Then share the url to the people you want to take part into the discussion.
Thats a bit similar to having a (real-life) talk with some people in a room.. there is no 100% privacy and if outsiders really wants to know what you said, its not impossible to find that out
I would say a private conversation in internet done in the right way is way safer than a conversation in real life. But we are already talking about encryption methods, like PGP.
but thats very different from having the content of the talk pop-up randomly when someone googles you or your username.
Internet is internet *shrugs* I search for my nickname a lot to remember conversations I had in the past (since for some reason these forums don't store your posts like every other fucking forums in the internet do >_<).
For everything else, discord or similar (knowing that those are also internet, so someone can be storing all you are writing/saying. Or even simpler, someone inside the conversation can repost what you wrote there in other place).
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Open a discussion, tell people you want a private discussion and post the url for people to discuss there. >
That way at least the creator of the discussion would be still found by google and the visability within the community would be very poor, because the topic would not be brought back to the top of the lists when someone posts something new. Apart from that I´d bet some people would still start discussing within the forum-post instead of the hidden one.
Its a workaround at best, but not a solution. A "private" category within the normal SG-Forums would keep all the upsides of the forum and its usability intact.
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This is a public forum (space), if you're willing to discuss private stuff in here, you're throwing your privacy. I'm a Mozilla Volunteer, so privacy is a top priority for me, but you must understand, that hiding the site from google is not the way to go. This website is to talk about steam games, but also about other off topics, you're not obligated to participate into these threads.
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No, if you want privacy you shouldn't be on a public website, posting things you don't want other people to know, using a username or avatar that can be associated with you.
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Privacy could be a feature of the "SteamGifts Premium" that cg is planning to have here. Just to generate the posts of the VIP users using javascript. You can try to suggest it in the topic where he asked about features we would like to be there.
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That's a good idea and suggestion, but there would be a group that can't afford premium (like myself), even if they wanted to donate.
I don't know if it's simply as implementing something that takes a few minutes or a hour or weeks, if it would be just that simple and it won't give any negative sides to anyone, then i rather see it would be for everyone.
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That doesn't help tho. For several years now, google's renders pages like real browsers do and can index javascript content too. I'd assume it's based on same stuff used in Chrome.
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Google can index javascript but they don't execute the scripts so if something is encrypted in the script, google doesn't decrypt it. The only thing google is able to do with scripts is look for normal text there.
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Nope, they actually execute too. Even ajax is executed.
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better idea is to just not post stupid and/or private stuff and the problem is solved. ^^
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I think that protecting my privacy is my own responsibility, that's why I don't have my full real name in my steam profile, sure you can probably connect the dots and figure out who I am and which accounts are mine but there's no way of proving it and except for SG and ST I have 2 our 3 accounts for everything else so in case I want to say I'm not the same Axel I can point towards the fact that there's 2 of everything to prove it.
Worst case scenario I'll just have to create an alternative persona to dodge the issue.
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I posted a pic of me naked and now it is on the internet! Oh I blame you, website that let me upload it!
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The poll isn't phrased neutrally, I can't really vote either option.
I do care about privacy; however, I like to be able to use a search engine to find older discussion threads on the site. If the site's own search were adequate, I'd use that, but it really isn't.
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Sorry, another needed suggestion, editing polls.
But a better search on this side would be another issue.
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It's up to the user to protect their privacy. Sure, there are some ways a service provider can help but ultimately I don't think denying Google from indexing a public forum is the solution.
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This site is public because anyone can read it, login is not required. As such it is subject to being searched by anyone and content creators should beware.
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If you put it on the Internet, whether the site is public or private, it could always end up in public view, either through a person researching/finding it, or a person copying from a private server to a public one. It's your responsibility to police yourself and simply not say whatever comes to mind simply because you're hiding (or attempting to hide) behind a username or in a private forum.
In short, I fully respect privacy, but if you chose to write it down, it's not private and it's not someone else's job to make sure that no one else sees it. Your choice, your words. Either stand behind them or don't say them.
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^ This.
I am often astounded at how many people don't realize that anything on the internet is both public and "forever." I can still Google stuff I posted 25 years ago.
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First off, I don't lie.
Second, I've been around a lot longer than SG. In fact, I was online long before Steam was ever invented.
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You mean to tell me that you Mods aren't supercomputers but real people? I cannot believe that! :O
I know, it's cool, I was just joking. Thought my sarcasm was obvious, but then again...
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Yeah, well... I don't even lie when I'm joking. You never know when a human might be lacking a sense of humo-- humo-- humo--
EOL
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xD
Well, I either took it too far or you had a very busy day... Could be both though!
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Hell nah. This stuff needs to be public. I've gotten a lot of help from SG just by googling the issues. Often, old SG discussions are the only ones that answer my question.
Not separating your internet persona and real identity is a choice that I've never understood. Why would you want some randys to know who you are, where you live, what you do and who you fuck or don't fuck.
Also, why would you say something here that you wouldn't say in an office somewhere? I thought that the 998k people being registered would make people realize that this is more public than some of the most public areas.
You still have a potential of 20k people, at least, who can see whatever you did a long time ago, because contrary to just speaking, posting a comment is here pretty much forever and the quotes can be read at any moment. Speaking can be heard as much as you want it to be. You can shout, whisper, whatever else.
So, no. This site isn't private and in my last two years has never been private. If you talk about your clown fetish here, then it's your issue for doing something so ridiculous.
Maybe the text looks like I'm being aggressive, but I'm not. :D
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Not separating your internet persona and real identity is a choice that I've never understood.
It's not that difficult to discover someone's "real identity." It just takes the proper resources and time. Most people won't bother, however.
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I just tried the most popular search engines for that. Stuff like 411 that CV-whatever-it-was-called.
Literally none of them gave information on me. On Google I also don't have a single search result that's about me. I went through literally all of the pages too.
I'm not sure how many more ways there are to get information on someone based on their online username.
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First, you have to find the person's IP, then work on finding all of his aliases. After that, you have to track down email addresses and contacts, which leads to traceable data like names, addresses, and phone numbers. After that, it's not difficult to mine data on the guy.
The entire process is a pain in the neck and takes lots of time and effort. That's why people usually just pay hackers or private detectives to do it for them. Most of the time, however, people can't be bothered.
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Yeah, I doubt that anyone would have the money or resources for that. Unless you're going to work for some Fortune 100 company at some higher-up job.
If so, then the likeliness of this whole thing being a problem is unlikely because they'd want you for your skills, not for your thoughts on Osama Bin Laden and how many rugs he had in his safehouse at the moment of his death.
But, I get your point. Personally nothing that you mentioned was actually the case for me. I have nothing like that connected.
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Multiple (fairly easy) options
Two of them (not wanting to get into robots.txt)
1) Header set X-Robots-Tag "noindex, nofollow" <-- placed in .htacceess file (older method but should work still)
2) Options -Indexes <-- placed in .htaccess file
Done
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Everything said in these forums or public giveaways is open to indexing, sadly. Weird thing is website uses nofollow ref for links, heheh.
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If it bothers you that something you say or do online might be known by someone you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If someone really cared enough they can just find out other ways.
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If my future employer would like to not hire me because of me shitposting on SG, then be my guest, I'd not want to work with him in the first place if he acts like that - I have enough of better offers to choose from.
Right to be forgotten is popular now and should be respected to some degree, but if you're not being yourself and you're ashamed of your actions then maybe you should think a moment before in fact doing them. I can't see how cg or anybody else should remove old discussions that is now kind of "public property" only because you acted like a moron.
No, I'm not perfect, I act like a jerk all the time, and it's not my intention to make it super clear that I am one by starting insulting company during recruitment, but at the same time I take responsibility for my actions and I'd rather openly state who I am, than hiding it so deeply that nobody knows about that.
Besides, SG has no history - you can edit out your post and make it impossible for anybody but the staff to see what was there before edit - that is your right. Everything else you don't control anyway, that includes things like web archive, google or me making screenshot of your post and keeping it forever. Therefore I can't see what you expect from cg to add.
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It doesn't bother me. I'm the most upfront person you'd ever meet, and I would hope my future employer would view my honesty as an asset rather than a liability.
I do however feel that people should take precautions on what they post and think pretty seriously about what they are putting on the internet before they hit that "Submit Comment" button. Take the whole minimize risk approach, and all that.
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This has bothered me (slightly) for some time now, not sure if it has been discussed before.
People here say all sorts of things, in political issues, religious ones, and now there is a topic about cheating, or just had a drunken moment and said a few bad things, many will forget that this can all be googled, by someone close, and also perhaps by (future) employers.
Should there be something done about it to hide this site from search engines such a google?
While many argue the point on that this site is public,since everyone still need to log in being able to post (and only can get an account with enough cv) i'd also argue this site is half public.
Public or half public, people tend to forget that either way, and thus aren't careful what they post, and sometimes people get drunk and act weird, get into an arguement and lose their cool, or just try to be "funny" with clickbait (like i used plenty myself in the past) i find it innocent but there will always be people that don't find that. Such things happened to the best of us.
Even if you didn't say anything wrong, and would use the term "i got nothing to hide", that's fine and okay for you, but some people would still value their privacy regardless what they have said.
I don't know if it's easy to implement, if it is then those people who want and respect their privacy then they get what they want, and it won't influence those that don't care for it.
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