Someone has eluded to the idea that they thought their anonymity was automatically protected here, but this is a public message board. It can be crawled by google, yahoo, and another search bot that roams around the internet.
If you are using your full name in your registration, instead of just your last initial you are exposing yourself, it is not Miracles In Progress exposing you to search engines. If you use your personal email account to validate your registration, instead of set one up specifically for this purpose, to protect your anonymity, you are exposing yourself. Miracles In Progress is not exposing you or breaking your anonymity, you are any time you post anything in cyberspace with your identity and email attached to it.
There is nothing that can be done about this sort of thing, other than people protecting their own identity by using only first name and last initial, and setting up an email account specifically for this purpose (to verify their message board registration).
The only way to keep the web crawlers off our site or any site at all, and/or our boards would to be to bury them with password protections, which would interfere with the public who is seeking help and support finding it with us. Not only would it make it impossible for people to find and utilize our site, but it would require that someone be in the back ground screening everyone who attempts to obtain the password, to make sure they are qualified for entrance and even then, they would have to be aware that crawlers are designed by legatimate hackers, they are designed to find what is in cyberspace. So, even with all the password protection, the site user would still have to use only their first name, last initial, and a email account set up solely for the purpose of verifying registration on any 12 step site.
I wish there was more I could do to ensure our protection as a whole, collectively, but in the end, it comes down to each individual protecting their own anonymity on the internet.
Thanks John for the clarification, or more likely for me the 'suspicions confirmed'. Personally, I make it a rule to treat cyberspace in the same way as a meeting and not put anything across the table (or on here) that I wouldn't be happy being repeated in the snug bar of the market tavern or in open court.
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It's not having what you want, it's wanting what you got. BB
