A Concern of Mine

[Ky_GirlatHeart 654]

Since there are bots that roam the website freely, isn't it kind of risky putting your birthday, Facebook profile, profile picture of yourself, etc.? I've seen emails have had to have been edited out of comments because the bots can take that info; wouldn't it be the same for what I listed above? Also, I'd like to know why there are even bots on the website in the first place. Do they help with the website somehow??

[suspensewriter 4,966]

Uh-- no, they just collect your personal information.

[carolinamtne 4,330]

Rebecca, I think this one is for you.

[Rebecca 966]

Moving this to support, since it's a question specific to this site.

 

The majority of bots are search engine crawlers here to index our pages so they come up in search engine results (such as Google, etc.). Those bots are harmless and actually help the site visibility.

 

Occasionally, "bad" bots crawl sites hoping to harvest email addresses for spammers. This happens on all sites, not just CW, and unfortunately there's not any easy way to prevent it. If the moderators or I see anyone post an email address, we typically edit the post and/or send them a reminder not to post email addresses for that reason.

 

The amount of information publicly viewable (and accessible to bots) is pared down from what a registered member sees. For example, if you'd like to see what a bot can view, log out of your account and browse your profile as a guest (unregistered user).

 

As for Facebook links, etc, this information is already easily discoverable through a number of external sources unrelated to CW. Posting that information on a profile is optional and meant to help members promote their pages if they choose to do so.

 

As many of you know, I'm a big supporter of personal privacy and am always happy to address any questions or concerns regarding privacy practices on the site.

[Ky_GirlatHeart 654]

@Rebecca Alright! That answered my question! Thank you so much for the answer!