How private is mumsnet.

[AmongstTheClouds]

Hi all..
I'm just wondering how private people regard mumsnet to be?

I don't consider Facebook private groups to be safe and private. Is mumsnet any better ?

You should consider MN to be as private as a billboard on the school run with your face on it. Same as the rest of the internet.

It is utterly pathetic isn't it?

It's as private as the poster makes it.
I'm happy posting my age, job, what face cream I use, where I went on holiday etc.
That's not going to get people looking and pointing on the street.
My email address isn't a name/surname one.
I use a VPN for work.

Bit disappointing that they’re not more subtle.

I reported this as suspicious, because I think this is someone trying to find evidence that because we all know that what we post is not private, somehow that gives anyone the right to use our posts.

But 'nothing to see here' was the sort-of reply.

It’s true that with time and resources users can be identified, but in general when we post online our faces are not attached to our user names.

We believe, however falsely, that we possess a certain degree of online anonymity. All social media would dry up pretty quickly if our actual names and photos were posted with every comment. Perhaps that would happen even if we all knew just how much of our data is held / used by social media forums.

Which would be sad if that happened for a forum like MN where many women can get support and good advice.

Everyone on any part of the internet should be very wary of considering any of it private, especially somewhere as big as MN.

The way to privacy is to name change regularly, but even with that you need to be careful.

On a different forum I once recognised my aunt's friend's daughter who I had never met, because she posted about something innocuous that happened at her wedding. After that, I knew she was TTC before her mother did, among other things.

And I've posted that anecdote under several usernames over the years, so it can now link all of my posts.

If you're going to post about something that happened at school or work, you'd better name change or someone will recognise you and then know how you really feel about your MIL, the struggle your DC had with biting as a toddler and that you find smear tests very uncomfortable.

Deleting posts is no good, there may be screenshots or old posts can be accessed in other ways.

Just as we're forever telling our DC, once it's on the internet it's out that forever, and a MN username is rarely as anonymous as we think.

I think it is reasonable to expect that any individual post can be seen by anyone anywhere, appear in the press etc, so it is not in any way private. However the clear expectation is that it is anonymous i.e. that posts are not linked together if you have changed user name, that your email address is not shared etc.

It is an anonymous forum, but not in any way a private forum.

I would have thought the university would be unintentionally making itself a data processor.

Private is not the word I would use, anonymous hopefully but I name change constantly

What she said.

I think OP is confusing expectations of privacy with expectations of anonymity.

Hello @AmongstTheClouds thanks for posting. Mumsnet is an anonymous, open site, which, on the upside, means volume of users and that volume of users means Mumsnet is available for free to anyone who needs advice 24-7. It also means fresh faces, a variety of points of view, and the wisdom that comes from a very sizeable crowd. But we always say it's worth being a bit circumspect with anything identifiable when you are posting and making use of the name change facility.

If your question is in relation to Aston, we'll update this thread when we hear back.

Its not how private MN is to me its how truthful its made out to be.
Because most threads are over exaggerated.

Do they??