Default Email Visibility

[Former Member]

Hi. Is it possible to set the default email visibility for new members to "staff only" instead of "friends and staff"?

[Ulises]

Hi jcarter.

There is no way to set that up for your forum currently. The way it works is that setting is drawn from a users global account settings in which only the member has access to.

[Former Member]

Mar 3, 2017 15:41:16 GMT -8 Ulises said:

Hi jcarter .

There is no way to set that up for your forum currently. The way it works is that setting is drawn from a users global account settings in which only the member has access to.

That's good to know. Thank you, Ulises .

I really like your avatar hover, by the way. Very cool.

-John

[Former Member]

Ulises, where are the global account settings for this? I'm seeing global settings for gender and birthdate, but none for email visibility...

[Ulises]

jcarter Could have sworn they were there. I might have been thinking gender at the time. I'm sorry.

Looks like the only way to change that setting is through Edit Profile > Privacy (tab) > Email Visibility. Double checked this time to make sure. Once again, my fault for going off of memory and leading you to the wrong place!

[Former Member]

Mar 3, 2017 16:29:08 GMT -8 Ulises said:

jcarter Could have sworn they were there. I might have been thinking gender at the time. I'm sorry.

Looks like the only way to change that setting is through Edit Profile > Privacy (tab) > Email Visibility. Double checked this time to make sure. Once again, my fault for going off of memory and leading you to the wrong place!

Ulises: No, it's fine. I'm just happy to know I'm not blind. lol

So just to be clear, this is a per-forum setting, and the default email visibility for all new members is "staff and friends," regardless of how they may have it set on other ProBoards forums. Is that correct?

[Ulises]

Correct. The only global settings are gender and birthday, as you've seen. Yeah, it is on a per forum basis.

Thanks for being understanding and my bad!

[Former Member]

Thank you, Ulises.

Cheers.

[Former Member]

Can this be marked as a feature request, please? Email privacy seems to be a rather important issue to many, and most members are not aware that the setting's default is to share it with friends and staff. The default setting really should be "staff only," so that members would need to change it themselves if they wish to share their email address with anyone else.

[Craig]

Marked. Bare in mind, however, that to be considered a friend, the person has to follow, and be followed by the member, so the number of members that can see the email is limited.

[Former Member]

Apr 27, 2017 0:50:33 GMT -8 Craig said:

Marked. Bare in mind, however, that to be considered a friend, the person has to follow, and be followed by the member, so the number of members that can see the email is limited.

While that's true, it seems a lot of members simply are not immediately aware that their email address will be shared with mutual followers, or in some cases, that the people they follow are also following them. It became such an issue on my forum that I actually had to address it in this announcement:

imdb2.freeforums.net/thread/6146/email-privacy

And while it may not be an issue for some, it is an issue for others. I understand that one solution would be to use a "throwaway" email as Michael suggested in this post, but it seems to me that setting the default to "staff only" would easily eliminate a lot of confusion and concern regarding the sharing of email addresses with anyone but the staff.

Thanks, Craig.

-John

[Scott]

jcarter,
Just to clarify Michael's post (for those reading this thread) - the suggestion was to use a separate email address for forum(s) that is not your regular email address; not a disposable, short-term email address, which has now become synonymous with 'throw-away'.

A user's email address is what we use for confirmation of their identity. If a member looses access to the email account then that member could be locked out of their forum account if they forget their account password. This is even more crucial for a forum admin. If it becomes necessary to assist them to a point we need to verify who they are and they do not have access to their email account, then they could potentially lose access to their forum and there would be nothing we can do about it.