General Chat

A member has asked me to add this as an individual thread after I pointed out the dangers of giving out personal information. There are often threads asking questions like 'where do you live? and 'where did you go to school?' and 'what was your maiden name?' and 'when did you get married?' and 'when is your birthday?'. Can members please exercise a little caution - how many of you use a memorable date or name of first school etc as a password reminder or even as a password itself?

Please say thank you - we all need reminding more often!!! jude sarf wales:o)

So true Errol, we tend to think that it is a one way communication, instead of world wide............ Bob( who has probably given away much more than he should have.........)

Nudge

There are some extremely unscrupulous individuals out there who DO look at sites such as this to 'gather' information about people - there is alot of information through genealogy that can be used for fraudulent purposes - I think that we all need to be reminded of this thankyou Errol for flagging this up. (Dont forget, ANYBODY can read these message boards, they do not even have to have a paid account!)

Thanks Errol, I was thinking about this one this morning, and making a mental note not to give out too much info.....trouble is, when you are an open person, it is so easy to do....

Sally, I can see what you mean about being open, but ask yourself how much info you would give to a complete stranger on a bus - Goodness knows how many millions of people could be reading what is put on an internet site and the vast majority of them complete strangers!

You are right Kris....trouble is I am always talking to complete strangers, and having a laugh.....its the way I am.....really will have to think first....

It is very easy to forget that we are open to all on here when we get carried away talking to friends. Thanks for adding this Errol, a timely reminder to be aware. ann glos

Thanks Errol for this reminder June ..

excellent point

Good advice Errol. I change my Passwords ect. every now and then just incase and I never use names. C xxx

Hi Errol. I couldn't agree with you more. I have myself been guilty of innocently putting too much personal info on websites and have found that my personal info has been bandied about willy nilly. Even now as I go under a different name there are those that have made a point of publicising my real details. Lesson learnt for me the hard way. xx

If anyone needs reminding try googling your screen name and see what comes up. You will probably find any posts on the success board as well as posts on sites such as rootschat. Anne

You are right Annie.....GR and another site have put up something I have posted......I thought what was on here, was kept on here......no problem.....but glad that I am now aware as to how many people can see what is written.....

Slightly different, but on the same note (I think). I have been a member of GR for three years. TODAY, for some unknown reason, it asked me to log in - never happened before. Fine. It wants my email address - I start to enter it, and Autofill kindly supplies it for me. What is worrying me - it then AUTOMATICALLY entered my password - not autofill, GR, did. I can see the potential for abuse here - it would not be difficult for anyone using my PC, or even this site, to know what my email addy is. All they would have to do, is enter my email addy and GR would supply my password. Am I worrying too much? OC

Hi OC, The same thing happened to me yesterday and my neighbour who is also a member of GR. I changed my password straight away and just now I signed out and back in again and it happened again. Not happy with that at all. :-( C xxx

I think where passwords are automatically filled in is not a GR function, but something to do with Windows. Do you get a little window come up asking if you want Windows to remember your password? If you say yes, it will automatically fill it in for you. PP xx

I use to have my full name-but Alan from cheshire pointed this out a while ago about googling. My name came up with a link to GR. Hence just the catherine now. catherine xx

Yes, I googled my own name after reading a similar thread to this - I was horrified, and changed my posting name - but late, I know. Yes, I do have Windows automatic password memory. Hmmm. Perhaps I should change that setting. OC