I've posted a lot of personal items on this forum over the past two years. I go away on a break while it was being migrated, only to find that now my "display name" was changed from my tag to my actual real name. It's not like my name is Bill Smith, either. It's fairly uncommon and identifiable.
I changed it back right away but I don't know how long the new forum has been up.
Really, guys? I mean what the actual f*ck?
This is pretty inexcusable. Its a bummer I can't post here any more, but I need to move somewhere that member privacy is more respected.
Cancelling my subscription.
Hey friends I'm sorry this happened and im just a lurker but just remember Greg is one person who runs the podcast everything else I'd assume is 3rd party
I doubt anyone looked at old threads in the merge even if I doubt they took Note of your name or screenshot it
I don't ever use my real name when signing up and if you use privacydotcom you can use whatever name you want in checkout
I hope nothing comes of this and doubt it, not trying to downplay just never sign up with your name
I generally use "no name" for all signups same with my card and I never have issues
@givemhell that's great. So they bill your subscription to noname?
This is not my fault and whether anyone looked at my threads is beside the point.
Everything was working fine before the forum was migrated, which I had no control over.
@orchid20 yeah they will bill to whatever name you use it's pre much to proxy your card and protect your privacy and if there's a breach on the site you paid at your cards not at risk because you can kill the one they give you it at any point. Deff work checking out a ton of features
And with all the crazy banning going on (2x higher side community's banned as well as a few others) I'm not surprised this is happening might even be related
@givemhell that's great. So they bill your subscription to noname?
This is not my fault and whether anyone looked at my threads is beside the point.
Everything was working fine before the forum was migrated, which I had no control over.
Agree. No point telling us maybe it wasn't that bad or blaming us. The forum and the podcast were two different log ins - i never posted comments on the episodes on the main site because i could see my name was coming up and i couldn't change it. I had no idea about no name billing so i did what i could.
We all know Greg is one man but we are paying, so there's a responsibility there which is inarguable.
Oh and also: I googled my real name and saw some of my old THC posts come up in the results.
Good thing I'm not applying for a new job just yet.
It actually seems like the site *has* been breached. I am actually trying to delete my old comments and can no longer do so - which is not normal.
@orchid20 I've talked to one of the admins earlier and they mentioned it will be active sooner then later
"Doxxed"
I think I'm one of the last people on the internet to learn what that word means.
But now I know that most or all of the participants in the old forum site have technically been "doxxed" by having their real names exposed.
Doxxing is considered malicious if it's intentional. I'm not sure if that was the case here, but if so - bravo, very well done. And my info was posted on a site where I had previously agreed to the TOS to use. So I probably have no legal recourse.
Why I have a bug up my nose about this is because now, anyone who is curious about me can search me and know I post what many would consider fringe conspiracy theories on a cannabis-themed website (not exactly a disparaging thing for most of my existing friends - but confusing since I don't smoke).
I do know that my current employer conducts web searches like this on prospective employees, and I think this is the norm. If I were actually looking for work now, this would be a major issue.
I got my hopes up and put in a help desk request to get all of my identifying info removed, which may include all of my posts.
If that doesn't work, the only thing I can do is request to have my content removed from search engines. I'm posting the request link for google here since I'm sure I'm not the only one taking issue with this:
https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905
Hopefully the forum admins can get their sh*t together if this was an honest mistake; and if not, know that they've successfully destroyed a small, friendly corner of the web for people like us to comfortably and anonymously post their views and opinions. (Black) hats off to you. /s
"Doxxed"
I think I'm one of the last people on the internet to learn what that word means.
But now I know that most or all of the participants in the old forum site have technically been "doxxed" by having their real names exposed.
Doxxing is considered malicious if it's intentional. I'm not sure if that was the case here, but if so - bravo, very well done. And my info was posted on a site where I had previously agreed to the TOS to use. So I probably have no legal recourse.
Why I have a bug up my nose about this is because now, anyone who is curious about me can search me and know I post what many would consider fringe conspiracy theories on a cannabis-themed website (not exactly a disparaging thing for most of my existing friends - but confusing since I don't smoke).
I do know that my current employer conducts web searches like this on prospective employees, and I think this is the norm. If I were actually looking for work now, this would be a major issue.
I got my hopes up and put in a help desk request to get all of my identifying info removed, which may include all of my posts.
If that doesn't work, the only thing I can do is request to have my content removed from search engines. I'm posting the request link for google here since I'm sure I'm not the only one taking issue with this:
https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905
Hopefully the forum admins can get their sh*t together if this was an honest mistake; and if not, know that they've successfully destroyed a small, friendly corner of the web for people like us to comfortably and anonymously post their views and opinions. (Black) hats off to you. /s
Thanks
Personally I don't think I'm affected as you because my name is more like bill smith and there are actual famous historical people with my name who show up in the search engines
I've been thinking about this tho and surely this would have to be done in a test environment first. Either way, if i was the developer and I saw a bunch of user names showing as regular first and last names, I'd abort or I'd contact people directly to let them know whats happened. Unprofessional at the least
Yes, I was a bit confounded because I have never really participated in the forum until now, and I couldn't believe that I would have entered my full name as a username on anything. I don't think the forum is generally accessible to the public at least, but it still doesn't excuse the doxxing.
All forum user display names have now been reset to equal the account username which matches the way the forum use to work on TheHighersideForum.com
When the forum was migrated over from TheHighersideForum.com to TheHighersideChats.com/forum, the new forum software referenced the display name from the website user account which was set by the membership management system as the first name and last name the user entered upon signup.
One benefit of the new forum is that users can now edit their display names directly here... https://www.thehighersidechats.com/forum/account/
As the person overseeing the forum migration, I apologize for not catching and correcting this issue at the time of the migration.
Thank you for posting about this and thank you for your continued support of The Higherside Chats.
@winnovator thank you for fixing this.
@orchid20 There is no breach of the site. I apologize for your name being attached to your posts for a few days. I have a lot of respect for people's privacy, and that's why I spent the extra money to hire the people who made the forum plugin to do the migration. I had them do it on a test server first, and then push it live, which cost even more.
I didn't know until I got feedback that the general wordpress fields for first/last name were being attached to posts. Some people actually do use their first and last name for username and they don't care, so just spotting that didn't register as obvious problem unfortunately.
I apologize, I did what I could to ensure a smooth migration, but the team made an error. I am happy to hear that the issue is fixed, and there seems to be no damage done. One of the benefits of this move is giving users more control of how their usernames are displayed, ironically.
So, I do care, and there should be no reason why first/last name would be attached to any posts by a person who wouldn't want it that way going forward.
