Today I call a strike on this forum. Whaes for us ,damn few, an they are all deid

I'm sorry. I just couldn't help it after that post. It was just so obvious.

I don't think curmudgeonly is the right word either. That sounds grumpy. I'm not that.

Really?
Oh well.......

Who do you think you're fooling?
Yes you are!

Doing a pretty good imitation of grumpy, which other dwarf would you choose to be?

Nope,not sucking up, what would be the point. Just letting my happy Pollyana gene out to play.

Since when did being polite or nice become sucking up? And jing sorry to agree, but reading your posts as a relative newbie so many come over as curmudgeonly - not all though and I'm used to it now and know you're lovely!

But getting back to the subject, hacking of forums is precisely why I don't complete profiles. Horrible as it was for those families to be 'swatted', the phishing that occurred is my concern.

Not a day goes by when a new case is reported in the media and the victims rarely recover their losses (which is why they make the news). My Mum and Step-Dad were affected by the latest TalkTalk breach and received two phishing phone calls - one pretending to be TalkTalk. If I hadn't been keeping an eye on them, my Step-Dad (who is a savvy retired police inspector) would have given the caller access to his laptop as part of the phishing attempt - and they bank online. My Mum just happened to overhear the conversation and stopped him just in time. My Fil lost £200 (£100 twice!) in a Sky box insurance scam. Neither of these examples are covered by any protection or compensation schemes.

We all think we'd spot phishing attempts, yet they're still phenomenally successful. I'd rather not put myself in the position where I am making it easier for the criminal to be successful. If profiles are reinstated, I won't be completing mine.

I dont want mine back either thanks. Not that I put detail of any real relevance on.

Wilma. Do you have concerns that some gransnetters posted their pictures?
But on the other hand, would gransnet HQ have stopped that if they thought there was a potential problem?

Perhaps I'm being ridiculously cautious but I would, will not be putting up a profile either. I was quite surprised at how much info some people gave away on the substitute profile thread, some complete with pictures. It's always in the back of my mind that anyone, including nutters and scammers, can read these and other forums.

Wilmaknockersfit I will allow that, very occasionally, first thing in the morning, or what passes for first thing in he morning for me, I might feel, and come across as, slightly grumpy. But never 'curmudgeonly'. The word has unpleasant overtones of qualities I do not possess.

But you can always avoid my posts. And I will try to help by making fewer.

Oh please don't, jingl, I love your posts (sucking up but also true).

What I don't understand jingle is that [unless I'm mistaken and probably am] is why you're so concerned about the profile page when, to my knowledge you've never used it yourself [neither have I for that matter].

jing don't take the huff. You know that's not what I'm saying. Please just carry on being yourself, and sucking up, I think you're one of the nicest posters on GN. That might not matter to you of course, but I thought I'd say it anyway.

PS swapping curmudgeonly for grumpy is fine with me.

I did use it earlier on, Tegan. But then it seemed to jinx me. When I put up a profile I immediaely got put on the naughty step in some sort of trouble. So now I avoid.

Let me make it clear. I DON'T CARE TUPPENCE WHETHER THE PROFILES ARE THERE OR NOT.

I simply prefer people to be straightforward when they give reasons for things. Or don't give reasons at all.

This seems to be too hard for the majority of GNrs to take on board.

Thank you Wilmaknickersfit.

Suck up all you like Maggie. Bring it on!

I may be in the minority, but to me the profiles are a huge help. If I am replying to someone I don't want to know their life history, but to know if they were male or female, 50 or 80, living in Scotland or Essex, would help me to understand their point-of-view and possibly tailor my response to suit.

There should never be enough information in a profile to identify the individual, but enough to give an indication of what kind of person you are - where's the harm?

soon yes, I have concerns about photos, particularly photos of children for reasons I'm sure you can work out. I have less concern about photos posted on threads, but any information - text or images - can be used by unscrupulous people.

When we sign up to GN we agree to the Terms of use which explain our rights, responsibilities and obligations when using the site. The Privacy Policy does say -

Security

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical and electronic procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online.

And that's all we can reasonably expect GN to do. But we have to decide how much information about ourselves and our families we disclose and I might be over cautious, but for me that means not disclosing information that could identify me or my family, or be used in an unauthorised manner. This is irrespective any security breach (which GN says has not happened).

GN is a very nice place, but as with any message board, unless we're meeting up with one another, we take each other at face (virtual!) value and that doesn't always work out well.

Posters on MN take their personal information and personal security very seriously and I do think some GN posters are too trusting about this. I am not a cynical person, although I do wonder if my age has something to do with my opinion because I suspect I am one of the younger GN members.

lefthanded I agree knowing if someone is male or female and their location is useful, especially if you have control over your location information and are not forced to say exactly where you are e.g. Choices like England, West Midlands or Birmingham. On many message boards this information is shown below the username on posts. Disclosure of age I would prefer to be optional and again with some degree of control equipment. e.g. Full date of birth or maybe just the year.

I'm trying to think what possible interest my photo and small amount of personal details could have to anyone.
The only thing I can think of is that they could somehow get onto the website we use to store our pictures, and steal/display others from there.
This happened to me once with my photobucket account, which I've now nearly emptied. No nudes on there either!

I think I should own up and say I used to be the Data Protection Officer for a large multinational company and also managed the company customer databases. Having worked with IT in many roles since the 80s probably does make me particularly cautious.

TriciaF emails alone have a monetary value. Imagine if say 10000 emails of women in the older age groups were for sale? It would be very useful for phishing purposes to be able to target this group. In fact, a good number of MN members closed their accounts earlier this year when the site had to use the http site instead of the more secure https site. They didn't want their emails harvested by bots (using the jargon for the little programmes that continually search the Internet for information).

And photos don't need to have nudity to be valuable to the wrong people.

I would think MN and GN have now gone over to the https things now. That's probably what's taken so long.

Our emails don't show up on profiles though do they?