I just googled my user ID, it's one my x-wife knows, and there's a link to my NoFap profile. That's a huge concern to me from a confidentiality standpoint. How do I make that information private? And how do I change my ID BEFORE the 21 days? Thanks.
Either email me at -EMAIL REMOVED- or for quicker service message any of the moderators (or all of them at once, by reporting a post). We take this very seriously. Also I'll be tweaking the settings because it is not ok that you had to wait 21 days to change your username, sorry about that. I changed your username to something random for now to fix your anonymity problem - private message me with the one you desire and I'll change it again.
Changing your username won't make Google automatically forget the pages it has indexed. It might be worth considering blocking search engines from indexing the forum to make people feel more comfortable.
There are trade-offs. Even if I disable search engine indexing, not all search engines will comply. If I remove all content visibility aside from registered users, that makes it so that many people won't easily be able to find the help that they need. There are 1000s of guests that browse through searching, never register, and walk away with life-changing information to break free of PMO addiction. Also, people come onto the forum and copy-paste thread content all of the time into their websites, blogs, ebooks, e-courses, newsletters, etc as testimonials for quitting porn without permission from the original posters. I can't do anything to stop that. So I believe a lot of it comes down to basic internet safety practices - making sure you use a fully anonymous username, not posting too much personal information, and just erring on the safe side. I am planning on adding in multiple levels of protection in the future, including warnings when you register. Stuff like next to the username field displaying a warning "WARNING: If you want to remain anonymous, it is important that you use a unique username for NoFap, something that is not shared with your email address, another website, your real name, etc." and a list of internet anonymity tips on the registration page. One thing I can do soon is remove the Journal sections from search engine visibility - those contain the most sensitive information, I believe. Good point. If anybody is having trouble finding somebody currently on the mod team, the report button is the best choice. Also, I'll be looking to bring on some more mods in February because the team is stretched a bit to thin right now.
Alexander, I agree with removing journal sections from SE visibility. The smallest sense of compromised anonymity there could kill the forums. Thanks for your consideration.
Yeah, there are definitely tradeoffs. Doing the journal thing and adding the tips is a good compromise.
