Events of the past couple of days is a good wake-up call that an attack can come at any time, especially now that this forum is at the epicenter of the culture wars. While we were not been hacked this week, it is always possible that it can get hacked in the future.
If the forum gets hacked, your private messages, IP addresses you used to access the forum, and your account email address will be dumped online. SJW's will mine through the data dump and try to link people to their real identities to exercise their 2 minutes of hate, similar to what happened with the Ashley Madison hack (in that case, a few famous people were shamed)
I strongly advise you to make the following simple changes:
1. Change your account email to one that does not display your name or is not linked to other public services. You should have an email that comes clean when you Google it. You can make that change here.
2. Review your private messages and delete ones that reveal your permanent address or last name. Then PM the person you sent that to and ask him to delete it on his end as well (remember to empty your trash manually to delete PMs) If you shared your phone number via PM, do a Google check on it to make sure it comes clean. I don't think phone numbers will be worth anything if we are hacked.
If you need to send sensitive information to another member, I recommend you exchange email addresses and then continue the dialogue through that instead of forum PMs. I wouldn't worry about details of the city you are living in or a bar you told another member to meet at some time in the past. Last names and addresses are the most sensitive. You generally shouldn't be sending this information anyway.
I recommend you consider the following:
1. Use a private VPN when browsing the site. When you access the forum, your IP address is logged. We must do this to monitor and ban trolls. Now in the case of an attack, I don't see how your IP address will be of value to the public or will link you to your identity, but surfing with a private VPN is good internet practice anyway, especially if you use public wifi networks. I use StrongVPN.com.
Most of you are doing these best practices currently, so I don't think it will cause you to make adjustments. This follows up on the new forum rule about uploading photos of girls. I strongly suspect that images you are uploading are being reverse Google image searched by white knights, so you must do a check yourself when sharing an image that can identify someone you associate with.
As the culture wars have progressed, this forum has grown from being a casual men's locker room to an organized command center that is causing pain and stress to our enemies. I don't know if that result is good or bad, but that's the reality, and we have to understand the risks that come with it.
If the forum gets hacked, your private messages, IP addresses you used to access the forum, and your account email address will be dumped online. SJW's will mine through the data dump and try to link people to their real identities to exercise their 2 minutes of hate, similar to what happened with the Ashley Madison hack (in that case, a few famous people were shamed)
I strongly advise you to make the following simple changes:
1. Change your account email to one that does not display your name or is not linked to other public services. You should have an email that comes clean when you Google it. You can make that change here.
2. Review your private messages and delete ones that reveal your permanent address or last name. Then PM the person you sent that to and ask him to delete it on his end as well (remember to empty your trash manually to delete PMs) If you shared your phone number via PM, do a Google check on it to make sure it comes clean. I don't think phone numbers will be worth anything if we are hacked.
If you need to send sensitive information to another member, I recommend you exchange email addresses and then continue the dialogue through that instead of forum PMs. I wouldn't worry about details of the city you are living in or a bar you told another member to meet at some time in the past. Last names and addresses are the most sensitive. You generally shouldn't be sending this information anyway.
I recommend you consider the following:
1. Use a private VPN when browsing the site. When you access the forum, your IP address is logged. We must do this to monitor and ban trolls. Now in the case of an attack, I don't see how your IP address will be of value to the public or will link you to your identity, but surfing with a private VPN is good internet practice anyway, especially if you use public wifi networks. I use StrongVPN.com.
Most of you are doing these best practices currently, so I don't think it will cause you to make adjustments. This follows up on the new forum rule about uploading photos of girls. I strongly suspect that images you are uploading are being reverse Google image searched by white knights, so you must do a check yourself when sharing an image that can identify someone you associate with.
As the culture wars have progressed, this forum has grown from being a casual men's locker room to an organized command center that is causing pain and stress to our enemies. I don't know if that result is good or bad, but that's the reality, and we have to understand the risks that come with it.
Roosh
http://www.rooshv.com