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Hoppingcrow

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The way this is set up presently seems to invite disaster. When I want to contact another user, the default is that my email address is sent unless I UNcheck the appropriate box. Shouldn't it be the other way around? That I CHECK the box if I want my address sent? I'd rather have a hasty "send" be something that didn't compromise my privacy.

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The way this is set up presently seems to invite disaster. When I want to contact another user, the default is that my email address is sent unless I UNcheck the appropriate box. Shouldn't it be the other way around? That I CHECK the box if I want my address sent? I'd rather have a hasty "send" be something that didn't compromise my privacy.

Anything done is haste invites disaster.

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The way this is set up presently seems to invite disaster. When I want to contact another user, the default is that my email address is sent unless I UNcheck the appropriate box. Shouldn't it be the other way around? That I CHECK the box if I want my address sent? I'd rather have a hasty "send" be something that didn't compromise my privacy.

Don't like the idea. Personally I'm always a little bit annoyed when other cachers don't send their e-mail address. I mean what are they trying to protect, its their e-mail address for goodness sake. Do you think I'm a spammer, or what?

 

What on earth are the privacy concerns giving one person your e-mail address? So they can contact you whenever they want? They get to know your ISP? What really?

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The way this is set up presently seems to invite disaster. When I want to contact another user, the default is that my email address is sent unless I UNcheck the appropriate box. Shouldn't it be the other way around? That I CHECK the box if I want my address sent? I'd rather have a hasty "send" be something that didn't compromise my privacy.

Don't like the idea. Personally I'm always a little bit annoyed when other cachers don't send their e-mail address. I mean what are they trying to protect, its their e-mail address for goodness sake. Do you think I'm a spammer, or what?

 

What on earth are the privacy concerns giving one person your e-mail address? So they can contact you whenever they want? They get to know your ISP? What really?

In my case, our real name is in our email address. That, included with the fact that anyone can easily find out what town I live in, means that they can find out my address within a couple of minutes. That might not bother some people, but it bothers me a lot.

 

I think that it shouldn't be automaticly checked, either.

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Come on guys don't be paranoid.

 

I am lazy person therefore and I want that my email address is visible to those persons I send messages without need to do extra click or need to remember to click it on.

Edited by TeamMH
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The way this is set up presently seems to invite disaster. When I want to contact another user, the default is that my email address is sent unless I UNcheck the appropriate box. Shouldn't it be the other way around? That I CHECK the box if I want my address sent? I'd rather have a hasty "send" be something that didn't compromise my privacy.

It was changed to include by default because it makes sense that if your contacting someone, you would make it easy for them to reply. Its annoying trying to reply to an email when you have to go and look up their account...

 

Its easy to uncheck, so I don't think it should be changed.

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Things like this are great for account settings.

 

How about putting a setting in your profile that you check or uncheck just the once that says, "When contacting others, include my email address by default". This would decide if that check box on the contact page is checked or not. You always have the option to change it before sending the email but at least it is set to what you think you want most often. Then we all get to have it our own way.

 

Also, I don't think it is fair to criticize one's concern over internet privacy. There are a lot of screwed up people out there and you never know what is on the other end of the line. Not wanting your email address revealed to anyone is a valid concern. what? even to a fellow cacher... yes even them. They are after all still complete strangers that just happen to share the same hobby.

 

That being said. I'm pretty lazy myself but I don't mind having to uncheck it when I want to. I would vote for making it a profile setting though.

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You want to contact someone and not be contacted in return?  I think you should have to work a tad harder at it.  If you have something to say, you should expect an email conversation if it was worth listening too.

I have to agree with RK here.

 

For those of you that have your real name as your email address, why don't you get a free web-based account for your geocaching activities? I use gmail for all of my geocaching related email.

 

Edited to say: IMHO, the default is fine the way it is.

Edited by NoLemon
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You want to contact someone and not be contacted in return? I think you should have to work a tad harder at it. If you have something to say, you should expect an email conversation if it was worth listening too.

I'll also add: If anyone contacts me through the web site and then doesn't give me their email address, odds are I won't bother to respond right away (if at all) if I have to go to the trouble of going back to GC.com and email through the user's profile.

 

If you don't want me to be able to reach you easily, I probably won't try to reach you at all.

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Things like this are great for account settings.

 

How about putting a setting in your profile that you check or uncheck just the once that says, "When contacting others, include my email address by default". This would decide if that check box on the contact page is checked or not. You always have the option to change it before sending the email but at least it is set to what you think you want most often. Then we all get to have it our own way.

 

Also, I don't think it is fair to criticize one's concern over internet privacy. There are a lot of screwed up people out there and you never know what is on the other end of the line. Not wanting your email address revealed to anyone is a valid concern. what? even to a fellow cacher... yes even them. They are after all still complete strangers that just happen to share the same hobby.

 

That being said. I'm pretty lazy myself but I don't mind having to uncheck it when I want to. I would vote for making it a profile setting though.

This post says it better than I did. Thanks, mini cacher.

 

Also, Groundspeak has made it clear that they are concerned about privacy issues, so it simply struck me as odd that in this one area, the default seemed to exactly the reverse of what policy seemed to dictate.

 

I like the idea of giving us an option to check in our profile settings to specify whether we want the default to be "send" or "don't send." That would handle the issue quite nicely for both the paranoid and the naïve among us.

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You put enough information online every day without even knowing it that sending a fellow cacher your email address is not something to worry about. Heck, as far as figuring out where you live, I could very easily come up with a probable area--possibly down to a few blocks, depending on cache density and your search habits, based on your find logs. Sure, it'd take a little more work, but with enough time and desire, you would really be scared to know what can be found out about you online. Want proof? Go to google (or your favorite search engine). Type in your name and take a look at the results. Next, try your phone number, both in xxx-xxx-xxxx and xxxxxxxxxx forms. Parents, for an eye opener....search for your kids' names.

 

If you don't want people to know who you are from an email address, open a hotmail account or some other free anonymous account, and use your gc.com name or something like that--would be a good account to use for all online business where you desire some form of secrecy. But, if you're emailing a gc.com user, you should give them a quick way to get back to you also.

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I vote for leaving it as is.

 

If you're seriously that paranoid, just use another email account. I have a separate Gmail account that I use just for geocaching stuff.

 

Or (gasp!), just keep unchecking the box.

I did the same thing.... I have a separate gmail account for Geocaching.

 

Of course.... now my regular email account gets NO mail except for spam. If it's not about geocaching, do I really need it? :laughing:

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You put enough information online every day without even knowing it that sending a fellow cacher your email address is not something to worry about.  Heck, as far as figuring out where you live, I could very easily come up with a probable area--possibly down to a few blocks, depending on cache density and your search habits, based on your find logs.  Sure, it'd take a little more work, but with enough time and desire, you would really be scared to know what can be found out about you online.  Want proof?  Go to google (or your favorite search engine).  Type in your name and take a look at the results.  Next, try your phone number, both in xxx-xxx-xxxx and xxxxxxxxxx forms.  Parents, for an eye opener....search for your kids' names.

 

If you don't want people to know who you are from an email address, open a hotmail account or some other free anonymous account, and use your gc.com name or something like that--would be a good account to use for all online business where you desire some form of secrecy.  But, if you're emailing a gc.com user, you should give them a quick way to get back to you also.

Ya mean like this?

 

33c6256f-b200-4371-a5c7-3f52058b943a.jpg

 

Just a rough guess where the OP lives based on his cache finds/hides.

 

I wonder if he'll tell me if I'm close! :laughing:

Edited by Mopar
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...Just a rough guess where the OP lives based on his cache finds/hides.

 

I wonder if he'll tell me if I'm close! :laughing:

Way back when I was pretty much just a lurker, there was a thread in which people were estimating home addresses based on finds and hides. It was a pretty good read, as I recall.

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You want to contact someone and not be contacted in return?  I think you should have to work a tad harder at it.  If you have something to say, you should expect an email conversation if it was worth listening too.

I'll also add: If anyone contacts me through the web site and then doesn't give me their email address, odds are I won't bother to respond right away (if at all) if I have to go to the trouble of going back to GC.com and email through the user's profile.

 

If you don't want me to be able to reach you easily, I probably won't try to reach you at all.

You don't have to look them up to email them back, all you have to do is hit "reply" to their email, and there you go.

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...Just a rough guess where the OP lives based on his cache finds/hides.

 

I wonder if he'll tell me if I'm close! :laughing:

Way back when I was pretty much just a lurker, there was a thread in which people were estimating home addresses based on finds and hides. It was a pretty good read, as I recall.

I live in a small enough town, that this shouldn't work for me. I've found almost every single cache in my town, so my finds won't give my neighbourhood away.

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I'm not sure what gmail is. I know that with hotmail, though, in order to check your emails you need to go to the website and check it. In that case, I probably wouldn't be seeing my emails, cause I wouldn't check it often enough. It's much safer to use my outlook email. But I think that we have used up all our allowable accounts on outlook, so I can't make a seperate account just for caching.

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Ya mean like this?

Well, that strikes me a kind of a jack-a** thing to do. Leave it to some to totally disregard a valid concern about privacy and crap all over them just because they don't have the same view as you. Sort of the "everyone who disagrees with me is stupid" kind of approach. You gotta love the different types of people you find.

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Ya mean like this?

Well, that strikes me a kind of a jack-a** thing to do. Leave it to some to totally disregard a valid concern about privacy and crap all over them just because they don't have the same view as you. Sort of the "everyone who disagrees with me is stupid" kind of approach. You gotta love the different types of people you find.

Well, if having to uncheck a box is a valid concern about privacy, then logging your finds online is even a bigger concern.

The point others have tried to make, and I just illustrated; if you are that worried about privacy that you are afraid you might accidentally forget to uncheck a box, you have bigger things to worry about. Your finds/hides/logs are publicly viewable, it's not like I tapped into some secret database for the info. People routinely post pics of themselves and their family, pics of their car (with the license plate showing), mention their job, mention how close a cache is to home/work/school, etc.

Compared to all that, the chance of accidentally showing someone who you are voluntarily contacting your email address, especially when you have the option of using an anonymous email account, is a minuscule worry.

Edited by Mopar
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...Just a rough guess where the OP lives based on his cache finds/hides.

 

I wonder if he'll tell me if I'm close! :laughing:

Way back when I was pretty much just a lurker, there was a thread in which people were estimating home addresses based on finds and hides. It was a pretty good read, as I recall.

I live in a small enough town, that this shouldn't work for me. I've found almost every single cache in my town, so my finds won't give my neighbourhood away.

The trick is to give the most weight to the earliest finds/hides.

Most people, when they first find out about caching, head for the closest cache.

Many people, when hiding their first cache, pick someplace close to home. It's close, it's easy to check on, and they know the area well.

Often, you can also add more weight to a cache find/hide by what is written. Comments like "Gee, this was practically in my backyard and I never knew it" add more weight to a location.

All and all it's mostly a fun little exercise, not an exact science.

People who have moved, people who have started caching with friends, and old-timers who originally didnt have many/any local caches to hunt can all throw it off.

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You want to contact someone and not be contacted in return?  I think you should have to work a tad harder at it.  If you have something to say, you should expect an email conversation if it was worth listening too.

I'll also add: If anyone contacts me through the web site and then doesn't give me their email address, odds are I won't bother to respond right away (if at all) if I have to go to the trouble of going back to GC.com and email through the user's profile.

 

If you don't want me to be able to reach you easily, I probably won't try to reach you at all.

You don't have to look them up to email them back, all you have to do is hit "reply" to their email, and there you go.

If they have unchecked that box, you cannot hit "Reply." You have to click the link that goes to their Profile and Send a message from there.

 

With my slow dialup connection, that is too much page-loading for me. More than likely I won't reply . . .

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Well, that strikes me a kind of a jack-a** thing to do. Leave it to some to totally disregard a valid concern about privacy and crap all over them just because they don't have the same view as you. Sort of the "everyone who disagrees with me is stupid" kind of approach. You gotta love the different types of people you find.

Wow. That's kind of a rude way to call somebody rude, isn't it?

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Ya mean like this?

Well, that strikes me a kind of a jack-a** thing to do. Leave it to some to totally disregard a valid concern about privacy and crap all over them just because they don't have the same view as you. Sort of the "everyone who disagrees with me is stupid" kind of approach. You gotta love the different types of people you find.

Well, if having to uncheck a box is a valid concern about privacy, then logging your finds online is even a bigger concern.

The point others have tried to make, and I just illustrated; if you are that worried about privacy that you are afraid you might accidentally forget to uncheck a box, you have bigger things to worry about. Your finds/hides/logs are publicly viewable, it's not like I tapped into some secret database for the info. People routinely post pics of themselves and their family, pics of their car (with the license plate showing), mention their job, mention how close a cache is to home/work/school, etc.

Compared to all that, the chance of accidentally showing someone who you are voluntarily contacting your email address, especially when you have the option of using an anonymous email account, is a minuscule worry.

The point the OP was trying to make which was stated later as "Groundspeak has made it clear that they are concerned about privacy issues, so it simply struck me as odd that in this one area, the default seemed to exactly the reverse of what policy seemed to dictate." is that it should be off by default. Its not like OP is wanting to totally remove the option of sending the email address. And yes you can find the info with some work (more than I'd care to do... even to some what prove a point) but the email address can make it a lot easier. And yes, if you are concerned that much with sending your email address, then you need to make extra extra sure that you have unchecked that box. But the fact that some won't take the time to reply if there is no email address has nothing to do with it. The fact that you can get a free SPAM collector... er I mean free email address from some online service has nothing to do with it either. So you don't like the idea of defaulting it to unchecked. And I guess you don't even like the idea of having it a profile setting to you can have it your way and OP can have it their way. I guess you only want everyone to have it your way.... so let's crap all over anyone that disagrees. Nice!

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In my case, our real name is in our email address. That, included with the fact that anyone can easily find out what town I live in, means that they can find out my address within a couple of minutes. That might not bother some people, but it bothers me a lot.

 

I think that it shouldn't be automaticly checked, either.

If you're that concerned about privacy, having your name in your e-mail address is probably a bad idea genrally. I mean think about how many places your e-mail address is likely to be sent.

If you send a forward on to someone, your e-mail address is included in the message. If any of your friends ever get a virus, your e-mail address is broadcast out from them.

 

Most (not all) ISPs around here will give you multiple e-mail accounts. I would suggest seeing about setting up an extra e-mail account with them that doesn't use your real name.

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I guess you only want everyone to have it your way.... so let's crap all over anyone that disagrees. Nice!

Yeah, my way. Someone finally figured out that I'm the secret evil puppet-master pulling all the strings at Groundspeak, making them program the site the way I want it. dadgum, now that you exposed me, El Diablo is gonna wanna put me on the cover of Today's Cacher.

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Just a rough guess where the OP lives based on his cache finds/hides.

 

I wonder if he'll tell me if I'm close! :laughing:

I had to look several times to even figure out where that is! I think it's in beautiful downtown Morton. That's a CITY! Yuck! No, your guess isn't close. You'll have to drive up a few log roads, cross a couple of rivers and streams, and travel fifteen or twenty miles as the Hoppingcrow flies.

 

By the way, and just for the record...my concern is not so much for my own privacy as just wanting a bit of consistency in Groundspeak's privacy provisions. In most areas, they go above and beyond the call of duty to be certain that users' privacy is foremost, but in this one area...the automatic sending of a user's email address...they would seem to have slipped up.

Edited by Hoppingcrow
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You want to contact someone and not be contacted in return?  I think you should have to work a tad harder at it.  If you have something to say, you should expect an email conversation if it was worth listening too.

I'll also add: If anyone contacts me through the web site and then doesn't give me their email address, odds are I won't bother to respond right away (if at all) if I have to go to the trouble of going back to GC.com and email through the user's profile.

 

If you don't want me to be able to reach you easily, I probably won't try to reach you at all.

You don't have to look them up to email them back, all you have to do is hit "reply" to their email, and there you go.

If they have unchecked that box, you cannot hit "Reply." You have to click the link that goes to their Profile and Send a message from there.

 

With my slow dialup connection, that is too much page-loading for me. More than likely I won't reply . . .

I hadn't noticed that before. I've never had any problems replying before, so I must have only replied to people who had given me their email address.

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...Just a rough guess where the OP lives based on his cache finds/hides.

 

I wonder if he'll tell me if I'm close! :P

Way back when I was pretty much just a lurker, there was a thread in which people were estimating home addresses based on finds and hides. It was a pretty good read, as I recall.

I live in a small enough town, that this shouldn't work for me. I've found almost every single cache in my town, so my finds won't give my neighbourhood away.

The trick is to give the most weight to the earliest finds/hides.

Most people, when they first find out about caching, head for the closest cache.

Many people, when hiding their first cache, pick someplace close to home. It's close, it's easy to check on, and they know the area well.

Often, you can also add more weight to a cache find/hide by what is written. Comments like "Gee, this was practically in my backyard and I never knew it" add more weight to a location.

All and all it's mostly a fun little exercise, not an exact science.

People who have moved, people who have started caching with friends, and old-timers who originally didnt have many/any local caches to hunt can all throw it off.

In my case, we only had 3 or 4 caches within 30 miles, when we first started, so, :lol: And I think that the first cacht that I placed was 45 minutes from my home. I try not to make comments about how close a cache is to my house, or include my liscence plate in pictures, or put my family in pictures. But then, I'm paranoid. :laughing:

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In my case, our real name is in our email address.  That, included with the fact that anyone can easily find out what town I live in, means that they can find out my address within a couple of minutes.  That might not bother some people, but it bothers me a lot.

 

I think that it shouldn't be automaticly checked, either.

If you're that concerned about privacy, having your name in your e-mail address is probably a bad idea genrally. I mean think about how many places your e-mail address is likely to be sent.

If you send a forward on to someone, your e-mail address is included in the message. If any of your friends ever get a virus, your e-mail address is broadcast out from them.

 

Most (not all) ISPs around here will give you multiple e-mail accounts. I would suggest seeing about setting up an extra e-mail account with them that doesn't use your real name.

When I reply to people's email, I use a business address. And as I said before, I think that we have used up all of our allowed email addresses.

 

But I'm still curious...what is gmail? I've never heard of it.

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gmail is Google's email service. You have to be "invited" to get a gmail account.

 

I have three Yahoo! email addresses, one at Myway.com, plus two through my ISP. The latter are secret . . . no one knows those . . . :laughing: but I also don't get any SPAM in them.

 

One of the Yahoo! addresses gets so much SPAM I'm tempted to close that account again and reopen another one by just changing a letter or two in the username.

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I have never gotten spam on my gmail account. When I first started caching, I had a yahoo account. I now only keep it around so I can give it when I fill out stupid online forms.

 

I wander around in there occassionally to see if there is anything I need to know, but there usually isn't . I will say that Yahoo's filters are getting better. About 90% of the spam is appropriately filed into the spam folder.

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By the way, and just for the record...my concern is not so much for my own privacy as just wanting a bit of consistency in Groundspeak's privacy provisions. In most areas, they go above and beyond the call of duty to be certain that users' privacy is foremost, but in this one area...the automatic sending of a user's email address...they would seem to have slipped up.

Repeating myself here to get this back on topic.

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By the way, and just for the record...my concern is not so much for my own privacy as just wanting a bit of consistency in Groundspeak's privacy provisions. In most areas, they go above and beyond the call of duty to be certain that users' privacy is foremost, but in this one area...the automatic sending of a user's email address...they would seem to have slipped up.

Repeating myself here to get this back on topic.

You have a very good point, there, HC. It does seem to be an odd thing to do.

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Staking out my position, just for the heck of it.

In general, if you send someone an email, you should give them an easy way to get back to you.  This is particularly true if you are sending an email that may require a reply, such as virt verification.  Making the virt owner jump through hoops to get back to you is just rude, in my opinion.

That being said, I have no problems with the solution of allowing the cacher to toggle it in their profile.

Edited by sbell111
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Its not like OP is wanting to totally remove the option of sending the email address. And yes you can find the info with some work (more than I'd care to do... even to some what prove a point) but the email address can make it a lot easier. And yes, if you are concerned that much with sending your email address, then you need to make extra extra sure that you have unchecked that box. But the fact that some won't take the time to reply if there is no email address has nothing to do with it. The fact that you can get a free SPAM collector... er I mean free email address from some online service has nothing to do with it either. So you don't like the idea of defaulting it to unchecked. And I guess you don't even like the idea of having it a profile setting to you can have it your way and OP can have it their way.

Personally as I said before, I find it somewhat disrespectful of the other cacher to not include their e-mail address in their message, but then again we're a pretty tightly knit caching community here.

I don't like the idea of a profile setting overly much either, as I think it would encourage people *not* to send their address (which I think would create somewhat more of a barrier between people). As Mopar rather bluntly pointed out, there are many ways of finding out things about people if you're willing to go through even the tiniest bit of effort to do so (actually it wasn't as bad as it could have been, as I don' t think there were any references to where the map actually was, although I could be mistaken). Many imagined threats to privacy are just that, imagined (after all, you can look in a phone book, and find out where just about anyone lives :laughing:). Just because you geocache doesn't really make you a particularly special target (unless you're a jack a**, and people may want to come egg your house because of your latest hide...).

Lets be reasonable here. Rapists and what not aren't going to go to the geocaching.com website, and look for geocachers, e-mail you, and then hope you e-mail back, and don't uncheck the little box, and further hope that your e-mail address is something they can reasonably convert back to your real name, and extract your address from. I mean who exactly are you hiding from? Do you distrust your fellow cachers that much? Or are you trying to hide from the world in general.

 

OK, maybe if you really insist I'd support a cookie that would default the option to the way you last set it...

 

Oh, and in case anyone cares, I live at

N51 07.795, W114 21.093

 

And you should be able to find my real name relatively easily too. Feel free to stop by if you're in the area.

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In a minute, I'm going to YELL.

 

THE POINT IS:

 

In this one area, Groundspeak's provision is not consistent with their stated privacy policy!

 

That is what I am trying to address.

The point I'm trying to get across is that I don't really see it as a privacy issue, so their policy is perfectly consistent from where I'm standing.

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When I reply to people's email, I use a business address. And as I said before, I think that we have used up all of our allowed email addresses.

 

But I'm still curious...what is gmail? I've never heard of it.

Can I ask you what may seem like a bit of a personal question?

 

Just who exactly are you trying to hide from? Who, that you are e-mailing, *don't* you want to have your e-mail address? It might help me understand your point of view.

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I hope that I am not off-topic in saying this.

 

If some of you are concerned that by not allowing others to see your email address makes it hard to email them back, maybe there is a way that gc.com can make it easy to reply to these people immediately, rather than go through hoops. There should be an easy way to do this, but then I don't know a whole lot about these things. :laughing:

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In a minute, I'm going to YELL.

 

THE POINT IS:

 

In this one area, Groundspeak's provision is not consistent with their stated privacy policy!

 

That is what I am trying to address.

The point I'm trying to get across is that I don't really see it as a privacy issue, so their policy is perfectly consistent from where I'm standing.

I'll second that.

For the record, I think if you are emailing me, it's reasonable to expect you to give me an email address to reply back to.

 

The fact that you already have an opportunity to opt out of giving me that email address is consistent with their privacy policy.

Edited by Mopar
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When I reply to people's email, I use a business address.  And as I said before, I think that we have used up all of our allowed email addresses.

 

But I'm still curious...what is gmail?  I've never heard of it.

Can I ask you what may seem like a bit of a personal question?

 

Just who exactly are you trying to hide from? Who, that you are e-mailing, *don't* you want to have your e-mail address? It might help me understand your point of view.

Maybe it's you. :laughing:

 

Really, I am a somewhat private person, and maybe I'm just scared of monsters under my bed. But I have a hard time knowing that there is a database out there where everything I say is saved forever, and anyone can look up everything I said. I know that it is out there, but do you really know what is going to happen in the future, and what kind of scenario will occur that could make you look back in time and say," I wish now that I had never posted my coordinates in that forum"? Really, you can't.

 

I most likely will never be in a major car accident. But I still choose to wear my seatbelt. I would hate for that one time to happen, and then look back and say, "I wish that I had made the choice to wear that seatbelt, but now it is too late."

 

I choose to be safe, rather than sorry. I do not have anything to hide, but I do not trust the unknown public, and that is just a sad state that we live in nowadays.

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