Identity on the Internet

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Zebedee
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 3022
Joined: Thu Feb 24, 2005 10:42 pm
Amateur callsign: VK6DB
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Identity on the Internet

Post by Zebedee »

Good afternoon all,

There has been some discussion over the last few days about forum members identities in real life. On a faceless service like an Internet forum, we can all claim to be anyone we like, if we so choose.

However, fictional identities almost always end up coming unstuck after a time. Claiming to be from one of our emergency or community services is a risky exercise if you are trying to be someone you're not. There's always ways and means of cross checking information that's been posted to a public forum. Some of this information, naturally, isn't available to everyone, but the site administrators do have the ability to dig a little deeper.

We are very lucky, as a group, to have people from our essential emergency and community services present to share their knowledge and experiences. Their participation enriches the forums for all of us. But this is the Internet, folks, and taking anything that's written at face value, without some measure of verification would be unwise... particularly when the source's credibility or identity may be in doubt.

Please do continue to welcome new members to the site -- after all, it's through the growth in our numbers that we get to learn more from each other, but let's not just assume that we are all who we say we are without question. And please bear in mind that in a public arena, we should exercise discretion before giving out too much personal information. You never know who's reading and what they may choose to do with that information.

As always, if any members have concerns about something that's going on around the site, please drop myself or Gavin an email or PM and we'll be only too happy to follow things up to the best of our ability.
Doug Bell (Zebedee) VK6DB
WARSUG Forum Administrator.

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