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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

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
I would think your number 1 option, would be to go Edit Options
and remove the ticks to allow emailing.
You can also go to Edit Email & Password to change what is recorded there as well.
That will probably help you for a start.

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?

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/in...8165840AAB9NbE

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)
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.

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.

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.

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.