Quote:
Originally Posted by downeaster
I will try to tread very lightly here as I do not want to offend anyone or start a flame war.
I notice some members include a their email address, street address, phone number and even their photo as avatar. I know this is a friendly forum, you could say we are like family. However, we are not the only ones reading these posts. There are robots out there constantly harvesting email address to be used by spammers.
Other personal information, home addresses, phone numbers, etc, should never be given in the open, either in forums, chat rooms, or elsewhere where people can see the details.
With user names that may be different, but personally I would not give my full name in the open.
If you wish to share personal info with fellow members simply use the "Personal Message" feature provided by the forum.
My apologies for preaching and lecturing but I felt a personal responsibility to my fellow members.
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I'm always cautious. I too would like to warn our fellow TOTV members. This really is a serious issue. I have a friend in The Villages who, just out of curiousity, has driven around trying to identify various members' homes just by using the info provided in their posts. He made a game of it. Well, he was able to identify a number of members' homes. These members also post when they are going out of town. Anyone looking to break into an empty home could locate these same residences. To each his/her own, but I'll err on the side of being cautious.