Why doesn't Metafilter have a privacy policy? [more inside]
posted by genome4hire on Feb 9, 2009 - 275 comments

am I the only person hoping for more tinfoil-hat in this question? [more inside]
posted by namewithoutwords on Nov 23, 2008 - 69 comments

Blazecock Pileon says " I'm not playing your games. Own your comments. Take it to Metatalk if you don't like it. And that's the last I will hear from you, because you're going to be ignored." [more inside]
posted by three blind mice on Sep 24, 2008 - 322 comments

I can't log in with Firefox, Safari's working just fine. Following Jessamyn's suggestions I deleted cookies & disabled greasemonkey, but just get directed back to MeFi homepage as not logged in. Anyone else having trouble? Anyone solved it? [more inside]
posted by tula on Apr 2, 2008 - 19 comments

It seems like there have been several questions lately about how to do things that make it easy to do illegal things or hide one's identity generally in a way that does not seem to have a legitimate purpose, or at the very least seems to only have a vague "I want to avoid harassment" or "I want to protect my privacy" purpose. What gives? [more inside]
posted by iknowizbirfmark on Jan 31, 2008 - 110 comments

This comment on this AskMe made me wonder - would it be possible to make an AskMe question anonymous after it had already been posted?
posted by Zephyrial on Jun 13, 2007 - 32 comments

I have a question about personal info privacy concerns on MeFi. [more inside]
posted by Kwine on Oct 18, 2006 - 54 comments

Lately, we seem to do a lot of googling-and-posting of whatever personal info we can find. It's publicly available stuff, but it's proven to be a pretty powerful tool for getting to people, and it seems like using that power often might lead us down a certain road we might not want to take. Should there be some kind of guidelines or boundaries?
posted by koeselitz on Sep 28, 2006 - 65 comments

matt, jessamyn -
as far as i can tell this is nontrivial.
what is your stance on handing over information to the authorities? at&t, google, other, or something entirely different?
posted by dminor on Sep 26, 2006 - 59 comments

To etiquette/policy: How bad is it to have posted a full name with some work history while asking AskMe for help in finding that person?
posted by snsranch on May 12, 2006 - 19 comments

Hey Matt, what happened to Alumshubby's death threat email post to The Jesse Helms? It was here, it got closed, and then it disappeared. Did you uncover some info to lead you to believe it was fake, and you removed it to keep from besmirching alumshubby's good name? Cause if so, say something, cause he still seems like a death threat issuing prick otherwise.
posted by jonson on Feb 13, 2006 - 18 comments

I've noticed that many AskMe threads (like this one) dealing with potential crimes and/or civil suits could be subpoened as evidence if the right person connected the dots. Should there be a notice on the anonymous question page that Metafilter may be compelled by law to release the IP address of anonymous posters?
posted by justkevin on Dec 27, 2005 - 40 comments

In AskMe, CMichaelCook attempts to out the offline identity of a MeFite. I don't know if it's correct or not, but either way it seems completely out of place in that thread.
posted by raedyn on Dec 7, 2005 - 261 comments

Lame.
posted by cribcage on Jun 12, 2005 - 43 comments

Ever wondered wonder what that user looks like? I've written a quick greasemonkey script that adds photos of users next to their usernames. Photos were gleaned from meetup pictures and there are currently about 75 photos in the database (Firefox only).

If you do not have Greasemonkey, you can install the script by clicking here. If you have Greasemonkey, right click here and hit "Install User Script".

I'd like to know what you guys think.
posted by null terminated on Jun 4, 2005 - 226 comments

Good idea: Playing with kittens. Bad idea: posting the address and phone number of someone tangentially involved in a news story, who didn't do anything wrong, can't do anything about the situation, and actually tried to help in the only way he could. Oh yeah, and who may not even be the actual person referred to in the story.
posted by Saucy Intruder on May 17, 2005 - 11 comments

Posting the phone and fax number of an organization for protest seems fair game. Posting the home address of that organization's director, not so much.
posted by headspace on Sep 11, 2003 - 105 comments

Accidental Privacy Spills. (found via /.) In which are discussed the Laurie Garrett thread and its implications for privacy, correspondence, and the getting of life.
posted by brownpau on Feb 28, 2003 - 6 comments

Sideblog: The mefi political compass. Umm, what the hell is this? The whois information for politicalcompass.org is as shady as it gets. The test has a few major flaws, in my opinion, and works on a significant number of assumptions, especially in regards to historical figures. I don't know if there's an obvious slant to it like there is to the Libertarian World's Smallest Political Quiz, but considering they won't even let you see the code should we be displaying the results of something that could have major flaws written by some anonymous "academics" so prominently on the front page? Not to mention its polarizing and the traditional political labels often fall short of defining anything meaningful nowadays. Oh, and also the Star Wars character I'm most like is Chewbacca.
posted by skallas on Feb 23, 2003 - 35 comments

I made a slight change to the user pages. Logged in users see everything as it was before, but non-logged in users don't see any contact information except for websites URLs. I had long worried about the spam thwarting measures I have employed not being good enough, and I've also been hearing about non-members hassling members for memberships, posting, etc. So with the new change, non-members won't be able to harvest addresses, or send you an email (unless you've got it listed on your homepage URL somewhere), and they won't know your AIM/ICQ or location.
posted by mathowie on Mar 15, 2002 - 34 comments

How do we feel about the real or imagined privacy violations involved in signing up for the google PageRank toolbar system? I find an old discussion here but the privacy issue really isn't discussed in detail. I seek the opinions of the learned.
posted by bingo on Mar 11, 2002 - 5 comments

How about making the membership information opt-in open source. Anyone who wanted could download the membership information in a variety of formats. Users who checked a box in their profile could then use their username on any other site that wanted to use it.
posted by chaz on Oct 4, 2001 - 6 comments