Amendment to the Forum Acceptable Usage Policy February 2018

[GiveMeABreak]

There has been an addition to the AUP. Section (A) has a new point (8) added, extract below:

"Personal email addresses and other contact details such as private / mobile phone numbers and addresses must not be posted in the public forums. The Private Messaging or Email contact system may be used as an alternative to communicate this type of information to other members".

[wurlycorner]

Personally I agree with not putting that info on a post (I certainly wouldn't myself) but surely this should be entirely up to the user whether they want to post their details in a public forum or not? It's their 'data' after all.
Why does it need to be 'banned'?
Wouldn't it just be better to just have a crystal clear warning that anything posted is in the public domain and therefore available to anyone/thing on the internet?

[GiveMeABreak]

There are those who may not be familiar with basic measures to safeguard personal information and who may be new in using social media or forums. This type of information can easily be harvested by bots and used by scammers / spammers, so this is just a small way in which we can help to protect individuals. That's one of the reasons why we have private messaging and email contact options if setup by members in their profile.

[Hell Razor5543]

May I suggest that, when a new Member has their account activated, the Mod who activates their account also communicates with them about keeping their details secure (if they are not already doing so).

[GiveMeABreak]

That's why we have an Acceptable Usage Policy James, because it is not practical nor time efficient for Mods to repeat this for every new member (we have had nearly 150 new members joined since January - excluding all the spammers that have been rejected). They agree to the T&Cs when joining, and we obviously reserve the right to amend the policy as needed - hence the announcement to update existing members.

[Michel]

I agree with James. It can be put in the standard "welcome to the FCF" email that is sent out when new users are authorised. You know as well as I do that 99.9999% of people never read an AUP..

[Hell Razor5543]

I am a member of another forum (that linked to a Stellar Game I really enjoy playing). Their membership may be greater than that of FCF. I will welcome new Players to the forum (well, those who have minimal experience of the game) with a standard spiel that I will copy and past into a post. This forum also has people who act as "Greeters" to these new members, and they also copy and paste their standard spiel into a welcome post. Would it not be possible to do something similar (with links to threads such as the Rules)?

Here is one example of the sort of thread I am on about. INaeem is one of the greeters, and I have the same tag as here;

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthrea ... 6885-Hello!

[CitroJim]

I agree with James. It can be put in the standard "welcome to the FCF" email that is sent out when new users are authorised. You know as well as I do that 99.9999% of people never read an AUP..

Now that is a very good idea. Good thinking Mike! I believe it's not too difficult to edit the standard automated emails to include a link to the AUP...

[ekjdm14]

I agree with James. It can be put in the standard "welcome to the FCF" email that is sent out when new users are authorised. You know as well as I do that 99.9999% of people never read an AUP..

Now that is a very good idea. Good thinking Mike! I believe it's not too difficult to edit the standard automated emails to include a link to the AUP...

That is an excellent idea, although I think more of us tend to be the sort to read the AUP on here. I know I did anyway! I think the real issue is that once it's been read, the contents all too easily slip from the mind.

Also a timely amendment, I've seen a couple of mobile numbers posted up recently by new members while flicking through.

[GiveMeABreak]

We're working on an update to the activation email template and to the registration agreement T&Cs to ensure potential new members are made aware of the policy.