What! How did my profile get on the web??

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audioraptured

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Hey Everybody....(Kach22i this might interest you): I was looking for a c.d and typed in my address: and from a powered by "Windows Live" site an "A9" search, (maybe Alexa also), up comes......... http://gator11.hostgator.com... and my entire profile, (which I thought was private open only to members), is now on the WEB !! Has this happened to anybody else or am I just a subject of the NSA? Yes I found it made me uneasy.
 
There seem to be over a dozen "mirror" sites copying information in whole or in part on many of the forums I am part of (found this out via a Yahoo search). However only the Martin Logan site requires a birthday, something I've never liked. This information is not private anymore, "audioraptured" is correct.

These mirror sites can and do contain your personal information making ID thief that much easier. Even this post is going to get copied/mirrored several times over - the irony.

What can we do about this?

Who is in charge of this site, and why has it been down for the last 1-1/2 days?
 
This is what I've wrote to our administator, that is if we have one anymore.

User profiles including birthdates are being stolen and posted on the internet by spyware mirror sites. Please inform all members that their birthdates and ID can be found by ID thieves. I have changed my birthdate to a false one, but it may be too late already.

Link to topic:
http://www.martinloganowners.com/~tdacquis/forum/showthread.php?t=2103

Cheers George/kach22i.
 
Last edited:
I am the owner and administrator of the site. It was down part of yesterday because my credit card expired and the email account I used to set the site up with hasn't been used in so long that it was defunct.
 
TomDac said:
I am the owner and administrator of the site. It was down part of yesterday because my credit card expired and the email account I used to set the site up with hasn't been used in so long that it was defunct.
I sent you a PM Tom, thanks for addressing our concerns. :)
 
Anybody posting ANYTHING on the Net should assume it will (eventually) be available for public consumption. That's the reality with web-crawlers these days. If you really want a shock, type in your "full name" (and/or phone number) in Google, and see what comes up! Just use common sense to minimize your risk.
 
[



What can we do about this?

Who is in charge of this site, and why has it been down for the last 1-1/2 days?[/QUOTE]

You've made 600 plus posts and don't know who "TOM" is ???
 
This is an example of a copied site link:

http://gator11.hostgator.com/~tdacquis/

FYI: I changed my birthdate to a false one and that new change shows up when I do a search and click one of the gator/mirror links.

If anyone has an idea on how to solve this, PM TomDac ASAP.


Thanks, George/kach22i.
 
kach22i said:
You don't want to click this then.

http://www.zabasearch.com/
The year you were born is public record, as you can see from this search site... As soon as you purchase real estate, anyone can find out stuff about you online if they try hard enough...

Things to carefully monitor is your SSN, Credit card numbers, etc.

Here's a fun experiment that I did awhile back: Next time you buy some software and register it online, use a different spelling of you name. I used "Tommie". You will be amazed at the number of telemarketing phone calls, emails and snail mails I got with that name. It was very interesting.

Bottom line is this: We want people to be able to find our site, so it's being crawled by search engines. These crawlers originally knew just the www.martinloganowners.com, but they crawl out every so often and see what other content is on the site and then add it to their indexes, which includes your profiles. If you're uncomfortable about strangers seeing your birthday, change it to something else.

Thanks!

Tom.
 
To give you an idea of how pervasive and persistent this is, you can find Usenet posts from me from 1982 if you look in the right places using my full name.

I ended up authoring an article for Make magazine based on one of their editors finding something I wrote and posted to the net in 1993. The same work email address was still active, so her email got to me.
 
Just no way to avoid the inevitable attack...

TomDac said:
The year you were born is public record, as you can see from this search site... As soon as you purchase real estate, anyone can find out stuff about you online if they try hard enough...

Things to carefully monitor is your SSN, Credit card numbers, etc.

Here's a fun experiment that I did awhile back: Next time you buy some software and register it online, use a different spelling of you name. I used "Tommie". You will be amazed at the number of telemarketing phone calls, emails and snail mails I got with that name. It was very interesting.

Bottom line is this: We want people to be able to find our site, so it's being crawled by search engines. These crawlers originally knew just the www.martinloganowners.com, but they crawl out every so often and see what other content is on the site and then add it to their indexes, which includes your profiles. If you're uncomfortable about strangers seeing your birthday, change it to something else.

Thanks!

Tom.
Tom,

What I hear you saying is their just is no way to avoid attacks from internet hackers, crawlers and sophisticated spyware etc., particually when our site is on on public display, isn't that right?
Fire walls / Anti-Virus Protection i. e., McAfee, Norton etc. still can't protect you if you voluntarily give out information like your birthday etc. correct?

I was relieved to see that the reason for the web-site going temporarily off line was due to a minor glitch. ;)
Thanks again Tom for all you do for us here. I really appreciate it. :)
 

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