Alaskan_Son Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 While browsing the forum a bit I noticed down in the lower left hand corner it shows who is currently browsing the forum... Among those names was "Google". I thought I'd double check what exactly "Google" was doing and it seems they were viewing the "community index". What exactly is the community index?? I really don't want random 3rd parties viewing my semi-personal information (name, where I'm from, birthday, hobbies, etc.). Not a huge deal, but if that information is included in the "community index" I may really prefer to change or delete some things accordingly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrianBeck Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 Search engines like google frequently crawl websites in order to gather data to improve search results when searching their sites. You can search google now and results from this forum will come up. We have now turned off the display of search engine crawlers in the active members list so you shouldn't them any more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alaskan_Son Posted February 28, 2014 Author Share Posted February 28, 2014 Thanks Brian, but you didn't fully answer the question... What is the "community index"?? Is that simply the threads themselves or can search engines also gather info from our profiles and signatures?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RodCole Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 Michael You are bringing up some good points. It is very interesting to me because I just happen to be reading a book entitled Who Owns the Future by Jaron Lanier. The subject matter of the book is about how the lions share of the money being made in the information age is primarily made by those at the top who control access to information. They get the information from all of us for free, with or without our consent, and then sell it to others. I have only read the first few chapters of the book so far, but it will be discussing how cloud technologies will play into this senario. Ironic isn't it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alaskan_Son Posted February 28, 2014 Author Share Posted February 28, 2014 Michael You are bringing up some good points. It is very interesting to me because I just happen to be reading a book entitled Who Owns the Future by Jaron Lanier. The subject matter of the book is about how the lions share of the money being made in the information age is primarily made by those at the top who control access to information. They get the information from all of us for free, with or without our consent, and then sell it to others. I have only read the first few chapters of the book so far, but it will be discussing how cloud technologies will play into this senario. Ironic isn't it? I haven't read the book, but cloud technology has always seemed highly suspect to me as its negative possibilities are enormous and the likelyhood that technology will be abused is all but certain. I pretty much never use any cloud based services with the VERY occasional exception of dropbox. On a partly related subject...As a builder I am required to have certification from one of the 3 letter federal government entities for completing work on certain houses. Well, when I registered my information with them, I must have mistakenly entered one of the letters in the middle of our company name as a capital letter (AlasKan instead of Alaskan). Either that or they did, because when they responded to me, it was to "AlasKan". At any rate, ever since then, I have received a HUGE amount of fear mongering emails selling products related to federally mandated code adherence addressed to the misspelled company name. Its borderline disgusting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RodCole Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 From what I can tell so far, the book deals with issues such as you raise. But, primarily it is addressing the issue of how the real power of our own information is being used to disenfranchise us from the value of our information. The main points being made so far are that it is this very aspect of the information age that is at the root of the loss of jobs in our ever increasingly automated world. Claims to have a fix, haven't read that part yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan_Park Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 The community index is the base page for the fourm: https://fourms.chiefarchitect.com/ It's a publicly facing page so yes anyone can view it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alaskan_Son Posted February 28, 2014 Author Share Posted February 28, 2014 The community index is the base page for the fourm: https://fourms.chiefarchitect.com/ It's a publicly facing page so yes anyone can view it. I'm sorry, I could be wrong, but it seems you and Brian have both side stepped the point of my question... Can Google or any other search engine view our personal profile or signature information?? I realize its a public forum and that any passer by can stop in and look at that information, but having that info available to a search engine is a very different thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Solution Dan_Park Posted February 28, 2014 Solution Share Posted February 28, 2014 I'm sorry, I could be wrong, but it seems you and Brian have both side stepped the point of my question... Can Google or any other search engine view our personal profile or signature information?? I realize its a public forum and that any passer by can stop in and look at that information, but having that info available to a search engine is a very different thing. If you post information in your signature on a publicly facing forum page it is public - anyone can see it. Google and other bots can't browse the user information contained in the member list, nor can they browse forums that are not public facing. If you can see it when you are logged out they can, if not they can't. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alaskan_Son Posted March 1, 2014 Author Share Posted March 1, 2014 If you post information in your signature on a publicly facing forum page it is public - anyone can see it. Google and other bots can't browse the user information contained in the member list, nor can they browse forums that are not public facing. If you can see it when you are logged out they can, if not they can't. Thanks Dan. That answered my question. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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