Hi. Sorry if this is in the wrong board, but I'm having trouble contacting the staff to let them know I want to remove my account, since it wasn't listed as an option in the user control panel.

Also, sorry if I'm being rude about wanting to delete my account on the site, I wanted to because my posts were shown as search results on google (I had a bad situation) and also because I don't want to use this username anymore. So if anyone can show me how or tell me who to contact, I'd really appreciate it. Thank you.

We don't typically remove accounts. When you register for a site and post, you do so with the expectation that what you say is public, and the information you provide is available for anyone to see.

If you have some really good reason for wanting you account removed, then perhaps something could be done. But simply not wanting to show up on google isn't good enough.

If I didn't give a reason why I wanted to remove my account, I think I still have the right to ask how to do it. If you really want to know what happened:

"mzjoycexd" has been my username for a while (I created this account almost two years ago if you noticed) and I haven't been on it at all because I soon realized using my real name in places caused a huge problem. A month ago, I was charged for stuff I never signed up for and been getting spammed about me signing up for sites that I never even applied to (free ringtones, viagra, luxury items, getting a job, debt relief, winning a great amount of money, etc).

Someone managed to get my cellphone number and my house number and signed up for a "debt relief" which I never got how that happened, I never gave away information, and when I did, it would be my given name (which is also in my username) And also this would be nearly impossible for me to be in debt if I'm only 17 years old. And since I used "mzjoycexd" since 2003 in almost 30 accounts on 30 different websites (including my main email) and my username was never used by anyone else, so it's very easy to distinguish me from millions of people. I decided to change everything and remove tracks of accounts with this username, and techspot was one of them.

Other usernames included a meetspot account I created almost 4 years ago (with many pictures) still exists after I asked them to remove it (for religious reasons, since I converted) and I never got a response from the staff. That was months ago when I asked them and I'm still begging them. Disappointed as I was with meetspot, I'm hoping I don't get the same response here :blackeye:

But simply not wanting to show up on google isn't good enough.
most members are unaware that Google's webcrawler visits the site regularly!

vbulletin supports the changing of user names, perhaps an admin can simply change the name and disable the account? That would save deleting it (if that's something that isn't done).

Problem is if we delete for one guy we have to delete for everyone else in the future that asks. Thats a road I'm sure Julio doesn't want to go down.

Techspot had nothing to do with this guy's 'identity theft'.

an unsubscribe feature button in the profile would be easy.

what's the exposure? lost of the content from that user? that certainly would create
a huge void in T.S.!

@mzjoycexd your email address is showing in your user Profile (http://www.techspot.com/vb/member.php?u=76334)
I would think your number 1 option, would be to go Edit Options (http://www.techspot.com/vb/profile.php?do=editoptions)
and remove the ticks to allow emailing.
You can also go to Edit Email & Password (http://www.techspot.com/vb/profile.php?do=editpassword) to change what is recorded there as well.
That will probably help you for a start.

most members are unaware that Google's webcrawler visits the site regularly!

I was unaware of it. I went on other forum sites and they would require you to log in before you do anything, so I figured it was the same here.

I hate those other forums that do that

Here at TechSpot you can view any thread, and all the solutions and replies, without logging in
:)

edit:

Although they cannot see your email unless logged in
Is it changed now?

an unsubscribe feature button in the profile would be easy.

what's the exposure? lost of the content from that user? that certainly would create
a huge void in T.S.!

For this particular user, not much. But say one of us with several thousand posts left and took our account with us. In my case thats countless threads began by me and over 7000 posts, that would certainly leave a void.

I'm going to reinterate my point that when you post anything on a public forum, it is there for the world to see. Its not my fault people don't realize that you can search for usernames. If you want to be private, make up everything, post from proxies, or never go online. With all the online privacy news stories in the past few years there really is no excuse for someone to not know this. It should have been common sense to begin with.

Appears mzjoycexd has tried to escalate this with some misleading information: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080408165840AAB9NbE

If you didn't like my response, your action should have been to send a PM to the site founder/admin not take it to yahoo, but whatever. Your post there makes it sound like we have your personal information and are refusing to remove it. That is not the case, we have absolutely nothing on you other than what is in your profile, which as noted above you have complete freedom to remove content from.

1. As mentioned so many times, this is a public forum, and nowhere on this site suggests otherwise.

2. Any information you post here, you don't have to back up with any proof whatsoever (which has become a source of annoyance to me whenever someone contradicts what I say). Which means you can lie about anything, and everything.

3. You could've just went to your old posts, deleted every bit of information there, and you'd probably won't be tracked at all in the future. Removed all information from your account, and so forth. What Google has tracked, it has tracked, nothing can be done other than contacting Google yourself. This would be highly unlikely to acheive anything, but hey, you posted that information to the world in the first place. (Facebook anyone?)

Now CMH I don't want to contradict you (being your issue stated)
Any information you post here, you don't have to back up with any proof whatsoever
But all support staff should be able to back-up everything they suggest
Either through original link source, or by lots of justified experience

This really should be a non-issue. Nearly all forums, and all that I've ever participated in, are more or less public. This is just how the internet is, and has been since the early 90s.

This guy apparently got all paranoid because he posted personal information on some other site, not Techspot, and someone got his information. You can go through and look at all his posts here. He has 3 in some thread that got closed back in 2006, and then posts in this thread. Back in 2006 he had some iTunes problem and then posted his email address for help. Thread is here: http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic46358.html
As you can see, Tedster informed him that that was foolish. Shortly after his email address was removed by a mod (not by mzjoycexd as it should have been). That is it, so I have no idea why he is so upset over this. We did nothing wrong as a site. I gave him a reason why we don't remove whole accounts, there are likely others resons as well, and I said to take it up with Julio if he still had a problem. Instead he goes posting a thing bashing me and Techspot on Yahoo Answers.

Now he has the freedom to post whatever he wants about Techspot on other sites, but any large public web forum would have taken the same stance as us.

He has complete control over everything in his profile, and he agreed to the Terms of Service when he joined. It is all covered here: http://www.techspot.com/legal.shtml

Not a good move to bash TechSpot on Yahoo. You should read disclaimers much more clearly in the future and have the sense not to use the same account name for your PayPal\online pay and forum accounts. Also, you should have known that making MySpace, MSN Live Spaces and other similar pages public, with your email address and personal contact numbers is not a smart move, which is what probably happened.
On the ending note, I think this thread needs to be kept open, so it doesn't look like TS is trying to 'drown out' the OP's voice.

Did I not say I didn't know when I made this username? Well I'll say it again. I made it a while ago (years ago, infact) and I thought it was "cool" to have my name on it, well now I see consequences. And no I don't have a facebook. And facebook lets you remove your account whenever you want and hide whatever info you want. I don't see that option here?

So I don't see the reason why you would say "then you shouldn't have posted your info in the first place." People make mistakes at certain times don't they? I'm sure one time of your life, you did something wrong, and when you try to fix it, you just get rejected. How would you feel about that? Bad. And when you have the ability to fix the problem, and the person who should help you just lets you down, how would you feel? Even worse.

And lets say someone else made an account with my full name and numbers that are my zip code and street address or phone number, and if I asked you to help remove it for my safety reasons, you're going to say no? That's a bit selfish, and it's a bit selfish to think just because one person asks for something, then the rest asks too. If that was true, then maybe no one wants to be here. So what I basically see here is that people are being forced to stay whether they like it or not. Another wonderful fascist site that just wants to dictate everyone. Totally fed up and annoyed. I'm just going to have to do this myself. Thanks for the no help at all.

You can still edit the account's details and delete everything in it. No one can see what doesn't exist.
As for 'fascist', that's just another name for 'Right' and 'Rule-enforcing' when applied to this site. Because they enforce the rules it means you have to be treated like any other member. You cannot be helped since you volunteered to join and you would face the same situation on other forums as well.

And lets say someone else made an account with my full name and numbers that are my zip code and street address or phone number, and if I asked you to help remove it for my safety reasons, you're going to say no? That's a bit selfish, and it's a bit selfish to think just because one person asks for something, then the rest asks too. If that was true, then maybe no one wants to be here. So what I basically see here is that people are being forced to stay whether they like it or not. Another wonderful fascist site that just wants to dictate everyone. Totally fed up and annoyed. I'm just going to have to do this myself. Thanks for the no help at all.

To begin with, you never had to enter your full name, street address, or zip code here. In fact, all you have to do, and all you CAN do is provide a username and email address.
http://www.techspot.com/gallery/data/500/register.png
TS Never had your street address, your real name, zip code, or phone number. Why do you keep bringing that up, we never had it. You never posted it in any of your posts, and your profile doesn't even have fields for that. You are complaining about something that this site doesn't even have the ability to hold!

I belong to another vBulletin forum and they have the ability to change user names. From time to time members request name changes. I don't know if it is a feature built into vBulletin or if it was a special hack on those boards. If a user name is changed, their name is changed automatically on all the previous posts made by that member. If Julio can do that here (and I don't know that he can), that would solve this problem for everyone. No posts need be deleted and the old user name is gone from the whole forum.

The member is free to continue to post under the new name or can just leave and not post ever again. BTW, not that it's relevant but the OP appears to be a she rather than a he.

Edit: SNGX1275 correctly points out that if someone stole your identity, the information didn't come from this forum.

my full name and numbers that are my zip code and street address or phone number, and if I asked you to help remove it for my safety
If it was asked to be removed back in 2006, and nothing happened, then it may be an issue.

But I would like to second mailpup suggestion. I believe that users, as they and the board grows, should have the ability to change their name:
ie lets say a user had a Username 18AndProud (couldn't think of anything else) and after 3000 posts and years later, they wanted to change it to "OldAndProud" They should have this option.

Don't we tacitly have the ability to change our user name by simply picking a new screen name and providing another email address?
I understand that there is a potential for abuse resident with this approach. However, if a participant is not posting the same problem in multiple threads or carrying on arguments with him or herself, it should be a no harm, no foul situation. Or not?

It seems to me if you simply stop posting, most of your silliness will simply die of old age. Won't it?

The board has the ability to change a users name, but it must be done manually by Julio. I'm sure he doesn't want to make a habit of changing people's names. Its totally irrevelant in this case though, this guy never had any personal information on this site. The only thing he had was his username and 3 posts in an iTunes thread, one of which did contain his email address, and that was removed a few days after he posted it, by one of our mods. We did that for him, correcting his mistake of posting personal information.

Also, yes captaincranky, I'm sure none of us remembered this dude, I don't remember him. I was just wondering why after 4 posts some dude I'd never heard of wants his account gone, so I checked his old posts (anyone can do that btw) and saw 3 in an iTunes thread back in 2006. If he hadn't resurfaced by posting this thread there is no way that thread could have ever surfaced again (it was locked back in 2006 by a mod).

I'm astonished this is even an issue. Whatever harm came of this guy, it was not done by TS, and even if all the bad things that happened to him were a result of his username being everywhere, the absolute worst that could come out of that is some guy finds his locked 2006 thread about iTunes. That is it! We never had any personal information about him, the closest thing that was pubically avaiable was his email address HE posted in a thread which was removed days later by a mod, AFTER Tedster warned him and AFTER he had replied to Tedster's warning. The ball was in his court, and after 12 days of that, a mod took that metaphorical ball (his email address in his thread in his post) and deleted it for him.

I thought it was by IP not email add.

What was by IP? He had posted his email address in a thread. You can go look it up, that email address got deleted by a mod a few days later because he had refused to remove it himself.

I have deleted this post. (using Edit)

This all mzjoycexd needs to do if he wants all his posts gone

kimsland - I'll answer in PM.

Would it me possible for me to change my user name to "Commander Cranky"? I was going to use that name when I first registered, but I thought it might be a tad overbearing.:haha:

Disclaimer...........>>>>> I'M JUST KIDDING <<<<

mzjoycexd, is he related to wysiwyg or dilligaf?

For this particular user, not much. But say one of us with several thousand posts left and took our account with us. In my case thats countless threads began by me and over 7000 posts, that would certainly leave a void.
If you delete a user account it doesn't delete the posts so it doesn't matter if he's made 10 or 10,000. The posts by the user become "guest" posts (the posts are still intact and so are the logged IP addresses). At this stage it is difficult to rename the user as his username then effectively becomes the typed in tag that guests can use as a username - on boards with guest posting enabled, so it is best to rename them first to "Guest" or "Anonymous" etc and then delete the account. Those two easy steps should solve the problem quickly. It's an easy task and it's not as if you have people requesting that daily anayway.

In essence I agree with you that he's accepted that this is a public board, but there is also the issue of ettiquete and IMHO it's a good idea for boards to try and protect users' identities if a user is requesting it.

kimsland, even if you edit all your posts chances are that it's been cached/archived by search servers or servers like the Internet archives (http://www.archive.org/web/web.php). Once an information has been put in the Internet, it is almost automatically replicated on so many places that trying to have it removed is futile.

@Didou

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In essence I agree with you that he's accepted that this is a public board, but there is also the issue of ettiquete and IMHO it's a good idea for boards to try and protect users' identities if a user is requesting it.

Apparently nobody has understood nearly every one of my posts. We never had any of his personal information that he was concerned about, "full name and numbers that are my zip code and street address or phone number". All we had was an email, which was not shared with any advertisers as stated in the ToS. So EVERYTHING about him except user name was hidden to everyone except the site admin, and he only had email. THEN this dude posted his email address in a thread, which was then removed.

So IMO, wanting an account removed when that account in no way has any personal information avaiable to anyone but the site admin, which is bound by the ToS he approved or wrote, to not give that email out to anyone, is not a good enough reason.

Until this thread it was 3 POSTS. 3 POSTS man. Some 3 post wonder doesn't get to tell us how to run our site.

Until this thread it was 3 POSTS. 3 POSTS man. Some 3 post wonder doesn't get to tell us how to run our site.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Well,putting modesty aside, I could have, it simply would have required a couple dozen of these....*************!

"Everyone needs to read SNGX1275's guide to making a better post" <<< I hope you'll appreciate the humor and irony here.:rolleyes: :p

Thread Locked ...????? Wheeee.....ROTF & LOL...!

I think this thread needs to be kept open....
. .

Not anymore. What else needs to be said about the issue without repeating previous posts?

How easy is it to steal the information that was stolen from you?

Through this forum = Impossible

Through P2P programs, Torrent sites, and similar programs it only takes a few seconds. My suggestion would be to look at your habits and consider where this informations was actually stolen from because I can promise you it was not Techspot. Also check what you put in shared folders, such as my documents. Also take a look at the reputation of the forums you are visiting. Techspot has an excellent reputation, and is why I decided to stay here.

Just looked up a decent video for you to watch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcuH27IwWVk


A month ago, I was charged for stuff I never signed up for and been getting spammed about me signing up for sites that I never even applied to (free ringtones, viagra, luxury items, getting a job, debt relief, winning a great amount of money, etc).

To be charged, I am guessing your Credit Card information was stolen?

Apparently nobody has understood nearly every one of my posts. We never had any of his personal information that he was concerned about, "full name and numbers that are my zip code and street address or phone number". All we had was an email, which was not shared with any advertisers as stated in the ToS. So EVERYTHING about him except user name was hidden to everyone except the site admin, and he only had email. THEN this dude posted his email address in a thread, which was then removed.

So IMO, wanting an account removed when that account in no way has any personal information avaiable to anyone but the site admin, which is bound by the ToS he approved or wrote, to not give that email out to anyone, is not a good enough reason.

Until this thread it was 3 POSTS. 3 POSTS man. Some 3 post wonder doesn't get to tell us how to run our site.
I don't mean his identity as in personal details, I mean the traceability based on the forum user name. IMHO there is a big fuss being made here as to why not to do it, whereas in a few clicks he could have been renamed and his post deleted - end of. At the end of the day I'm not running the place, just giving an opinion.

:wave:

This is my last post in this thread unless it gets really crazy.

caravel - It probably is very easy to actually remove 1 guys account and replace it with guest or some other made up name. I don't know for sure since I never have seen the underworkings of this site, I'm only a mod, not an admin. I do know that our admin trusts the mods to help run the site and deal with what we can so he doesn't have to get personally involved. We (mods) can also do a special form of a ban where someone's posts and threads they created gets deleted to, this happens on a daily basis for the spammers that come here. Some days we don't get any spam stuff that I know of, other days I personally end up banning 3 different usernames. Those accounts are for all intents 'gone'.

What we are talking about here is some dude wanting an account to be deleted for reasons that don't amount to anything in the big scheme of things. As I've said ad nauseum we had nothing to do with whatever complaints about identity theft he's had, and therefore we are not going to delete his account. Its a matter of principle. Personally, I've been here since December 1999, I don't want some kid that has 3 posts come in with a 4th post demanding that we remove his account for reasons that don't line up with his whole identity theft argument.

I gave him and I an out on this, and that was if Julio agreed to it. You can see early on in this thread I said to take it up with Julio if he disagreed. Julio runs this site, if Julio wants to delete some guys account then he will and that is that.

And it isn't uncommon that we get asked for account deletions, but oddly enough I was unable to find any requests during a breif search. But you'll have to take my word on it that it does happen. Its never been honored in the past, which is why I have taken the stance that I did.

I agree, your information couldn't have been obtained from here. That being said, I do believe it should be possible to "unsubscribe" and all posts be said to come from "Guest".

Julio did change my name, but I believe I was one of the few that asked. It would be an automatic refusal if everyone started asking. All he did to mine was take a "44" off the end, so it wasn't a big deal anyway.

kimsland, robots.txt is one way of hiding information but nothing forces web crawlers or archives sites to follow it, it's on a voluntary basis.