IP Forum Privacy

[acidtechno]

Hi,

I'm curious to know if Freedom2Support give official F2S staff access to IP address of users who post on this forum.

[aos101]

// me goes looking for our FAQ on this (although admittedly they aren't that easy to find)

http://www.freedom2support.net/about...lt&cat=30#a244

Who can see my IP address on the forums?
Normal forum users cannot see your IP address on the forums, but members of the Freedom2Support Team and Freedom2Surf staff (who are forum members) can see the IP address you are posting from. This allows Freedom2Surf staff to easily lookup account information and details of your broadband connection to help solve your problems.

It's only people who have "freedom2surf Staff" under their name, which means we are sure they are F2S/Pipex staff. You can see current registered F2S staff here.

[acidtechno]

ok thanks, can you remember when that was started? (f2s staff access to forum IP).

I never knew this before, I must have overlooked it, because I have been to that section of the site in the past. I have to say I am pretty surprised, because it could be seen as an invasion of privacy, when this site was supposed to be independent from F2S.

Reason I asked, was because it dawned on me why sometimes F2S staff tell a customer on here they are testing something for them, because not everyone sends an F2S member of staff a pm with details in before that member of staff has posted, also when I dealt with an F2S member of staff in the past with an issue, I had to provide account details in a pm, I assume F2S staff members did not have access to IP at the time, because I would have been identified through that instead.

[aos101]

I can understand that it could be seen as an invasion of privacy, but we do think it helps users overall because it means F2S staff can start looking into issues quickly if you are posting from your connection as they don't have to PM a user and potentially wait hours for them to respond. It was F2S who originally asked for this functionality in March 2004 (and they've had the functionality since then) because they said people often asked for help but didn't give their phone number (understandable) or account name, and if they have the IP address of their connection they can find their account instantly.

We do mention that staff can see IP addresses in our Privacy Policy, although I think the wording could be improved. Do you think we should make it clearer to users that F2S staff can see IP addresses?

[Justin]

Freedom2Support disclosed this as soon as it happened and either emailed or notified all existing users at the time of the change of the privacy polciy to give users a chance to cancel their accounts if they saw that they did not want to abide by the new policy. It was only after this period elapsed that f2s had full access to ip addresses.

With regards to new registrations, it is mentioned in the signup to review the privacy policy before registering, so we are covered under thiis and if this was read as it should be by agreeing to the T&C's contained therein. The whole idea of making this change in 2004 was to help you guys out more, we might be independent, but our end goal is to help f2s users in the best way possible and we felt this would do that.

[acidtechno]

ok, thank you both for the info.

I agree, it's a very good feature that does help F2S staff speed up the process of helping people.

I was not registered on the forum at the time the introduction of it took place, and when I signed up, I may have failed to read the privacy policy fully because I thought this was an independent help forum like any other, where F2S did not have such exclusive access.

I am thinking many other people have not realised the fact that F2S can directly identify them, I fear some comments may get people into trouble, because of comments made about torrents and other use of their internet connection. I hope identification is only used to help people, and not target people because of comments made about their own use.

Originally Posted by aos101

Do you think we should make it clearer to users that F2S staff can see IP addresses?

I do think the privacy policy should be made more visible and clearer to users, I think a link on the front page should easily be visible.

I also think the "Our Site" section has not got a dedicated link to it from the front page, sure, you have links that lead to it (such as clicking ADSL on the top of front page) and links that are part of it along the bottom bar (contact us etc) but I feel a link to "Our Site" would be clear and handy and help give users a fast link to those parts, and give newcomers and guests a clear entrance path to read about the site, who runs it and how. Could always call the actual link About Us, instead of Our Site though, if desired.

[Justin]

When you sign up you view:

Forum Rules - In order to proceed, you must agree with the following rules:
Although the administrators and moderators of the Freedom2Support Forums will attempt to keep all objectionable messages off this forum, it is impossible for us to review all messages.

All messages express the views of the author, and neither the owners of Freedom2Support nor any such parties discussed in such messages will be held responsible for the content of any message.

By agreeing to these rules, you warrant that you will not post any messages that are obscene, vulgar, sexually-orientated, hateful, threatening, or otherwise violative of any laws.

The Freedom2Support forums are entirley independent of Freedom2Surf and there is no official connection between the two parties, although freedom2surf staff do post here.

By registering for the Freedom2Support Forums you agree that very occasionally we may send you website updates and news regarding the Freedom2Support site. This normally consists of one mailing every six months.

If you agree to the terms, please check the 'I agree' checkbox and press the 'Register' button below. If you would like to cancel the registration, click here to return to the forums index.

Our Privacy Policy can be viewed here,

(Checkbox) I agree to the Freedom2Support Terms of Registration and Privacy Policy.

With regards to the issues with the our site section of the site, this is an issue related to the current design - When the design is decommissioned in the future this will be sorted among other minor annoyances.

There is now a privacy policy link at the bottom of the forum, for reference.

[aos101]

Originally Posted by acidtechno

ok, thank you both for the info.

I agree, it's a very good feature that does help F2S staff speed up the process of helping people.

I was not registered on the forum at the time the introduction of it took place, and when I signed up, I may have failed to read the privacy policy fully because I thought this was an independent help forum like any other, where F2S did not have such exclusive access.

I am thinking many other people have not realised the fact that F2S can directly identify them, I fear some comments may get people into trouble, because of comments made about torrents and other use of their internet connection. I hope identification is only used to help people, and not target people because of comments made about their own use.

Even though F2S staff can see IP addresses, we are still very much independent. We like to work with F2S when it benefits users, and we think this does overall. There's certainly no chance of us being influenced by the donation they made at Christmas because we haven't got the money yet. (a bit offtopic, but they really annoy me).

I would doubt F2S would use the access to go hunting down people who use torrents (they've got better things to be doing, and bigger problems), and if we did find out F2S have been abusing this privilege for something like that we would look at suspending the privilege. It is meant to be there to help users, and we wouldn't tolerate them using it for anything else.

[NewsreadeR]

There's certainly no chance of us being influenced by the donation they made at Christmas because we haven't got the money yet. (a bit offtopic, but they really annoy me).

In which case F2S should be ashamed of themselves, perhaps they should read this and think, oh we said we are going to do it, lets do it.

I'll send you a donation over the next few days guys I earn less than F2S and can still afford to donate and keep my word.

[NewsreadeR]

Our Promise to You!
Freedom2Support respects your privacy. We want to make use of individual identifying information that you provide to us for purposes of serving you better. "Individual identifying information" is information that enables us to identify you, such as your email address, name and IP Address.

That does not state that Freedom 2 Support can read the IP addresses, it quite clearly says Freedom 2 Support, not F2S.

As I am not on my F2S IP address now, they should not be privvy to that information.

[Justin]

Read on......

From time to time Freedom2Support reserves the right to disclose information such as your IP address to Freedom2Surf staff and other team members for purposes of serving and helping you better.

[NewsreadeR]

Ahhh

That will teach me, in all honesty it aint a problem for me though anyway.

[wfnuk]

Originally Posted by NewsreadeR

As I am not on my F2S IP address now, they should not be privvy to that information.

I totally agree with that but, unfortunately, as things stand, I don't think that there is any way of policing things - F2S can only be allowed to view all or none, with nothing in between.

[kmount]

Lets face it though, anyone who hosts a website can see your IP address ... Its hardly a sought after commodity anymore.

[aos101]

Originally Posted by NewsreadeR

As I am not on my F2S IP address now, they should not be privvy to that information.

Thinking about it, we might be able to make it so F2S staff could only see your IP if it was an F2S IP, and it just say "non F2S IP" or something if it isn't. That would probably require a vBulletin plugin since you can't use full PHP code in a template though.

[NewsreadeR]

Adam,

Seriously I aint bothered. Thinking about it now, thats how they knew who to send my MAC to, I was thinking how the heck....

[gomez]

If you are going to make it conditional, why not make it a User CP Opt-In option?

[kmount]

Or remove the moderation access rights the f2s staff have, as the question asks whether they _need_ it these days... certainly in the pass sure, but now?

[aos101]

Originally Posted by gomez

If you are going to make it conditional, why not make it a User CP Opt-In option?

If that is something people want we could probably do that somehow.

Originally Posted by Chaz

Or remove the moderation access rights the f2s staff have, as the question asks whether they _need_ it these days... certainly in the pass sure, but now?

They don't have moderation access. They did technically use to be moderators in the vBulletin software as that was the only way we could allow them to see IP addresses, but the permissions were set such that seeing IP addresses was the only moderator privilage they had (they couldn't edit other people's threads or anything).

This was a problem because it meant they would receive reports of reported posts, so I changed it so they are no longer moderators in the vBulletin software and I made a customisation to one of the templates which allows them to view IP addresses. They can also move their own threads and a few other things normal users cannot do (so they don't have to get us to correct simple mistakes they make), but they can't affect other people's threads any more than a normal user.

[kmount]

I didn't imply they had full access, I meant the 'aspects' above normal access, IE the viewing of IP's, the posting in restricted areas etc.

The big question is whether they _need_ to see IP's.

[aos101]

Ah OK Chaz. Well they don't need to see IPs, but I would think it is helpful. To understand how helpful it is to see IPs, really we need some input from F2S staff in this thread as to how much they use it (since it is them who use the feature).

[acidtechno]

interesting discussion

I know of one ISP who has their own official forum where their admins actively police the forum communicating with its customers openly sometimes discussing tests they made and other details that should have remained private, all because they were using the IP info from the user posting on the forum, one such topic was about a guy who was talking generally about torrents and the laws surrounding them, and it appeared his ISP targeted him, checked out his logs and openly stated pubicly about his kind of use and turned on him, a few days later he appears as an ex member of the forum.

So peoples concerns at the IP view option are understandable.

I do still think it's a good idea which helps sort problems out though.

[AndyBites]

could we have an opt out?

[Justin]

Guys - This has been there for years, I don't know why there is suddenly so much fuss about it. Of course you have chance to opt out, but as it stands you would have to stop posting to opt out. But I'm not sure why you would want to, after all, you come to Freedom2Support to be helped, why would you want to try and decrease the chances of being helped?

If the privilege is abused it will be taken away, but I have no reason to believe that anyone has abused it, it was added ages ago at the request of Stephen or Adam I believe, and it has helped dozens upon dozens of people to get their issues resolved. The reason we gave them it, notifying users at the time, is that I trusted f2s and I knew that it would not be abused. If I had any doubt I'd never have sanctioned it.

[stephen_ex-f2s]

It made it much easier to help people when I worked there. I'm not being bitter or anything, but often customers don't make it easy for themselves, so when such a simple and effective idea as displaying the IP address is implemented it made a huuuuuge difference.