Privacy concerns from [split] AF Hall of Shame (Post Edition)

[Rayaan]

All I asked him was whether he was done "investigating" me outside of this forum. He said that he could not guarantee that he was. Thus, if I have to post here knowing that if he feels like it (for no better reason than "just in case") he will go "investigating" again, It ruins the fun of posting. We talk about stalking in a jokey way, its actually not a nice feeling.

Worth remembering too that we are not talking about invading privacy for national security, its a fucking discussion forum. For fun.

Jacob, just a few things I'm going to say to you briefly.

1. You asked me "Are you now done 'investigating' me?" My reply to that was, basically, that I cannot promise you that I won't ever investigate you. Why did I say that? It's because sometimes the staff team will and does investigate members, and we are allowed to do that for internal staff reasons. You will not get an immunity from this rule either. I'm sorry if you don't like it, though. To be honest, it's a bit funny to me that it takes this little to ruin the fun for you.

It takes a lot of work to keep our site running and prevent abuse, and we sometimes use your data in order to facilitate this. Your information is used internally only where necessary. For instance, we keep IP addresses of all traffic for 90 days in order to investigate issues with our site, track and block suspected spammers, and otherwise maintain the integrity of the community. We keep post and shout IP data indefinitely due to limitations with the MyBB software, and because it makes it easier for us to identify sock accounts.

2. In this case, however, I'll admit that it was not actually necessary to search you outside of this forum, but I did have some suspicions of you and that's why searched you in other forums/websites. This is also valid reason to search members. I did this for an internal staff reason, and it was also because I was curious to see whether or not my suspicions of you were correct.

3. I had suspicions of you for a reason, which doesn't need to be discussed in the public arena at this time although the staff is aware of my reasons (and they even agreed that I had an acceptable reason to search/investigate you outside of this forum). I have proof of all of this in a report thread, which I and the staff members have been discussing.

4. That being said, what I did somewhat violate, and I apologized for doing so, is the following rule:

We may disclose – or preserve for future disclosure – your information if we believe, after due consideration, that doing so is reasonably necessary to comply with a law, regulation, or legal request. If we are going to release your information, we will do our best to provide you with notice in advance via the private messaging system unless we are prohibited by court order from doing so.

in this post:
http://atheistforums.org/thread-22974-po...#pid571194

^ That was the worst thing I did. I flaunted the knowledge that I obtained of you in a rather careless and immature manner. I should have at least told you that privately instead of doing it in the open forum. And I admit it was a bit of a 'power trip' on my side, along with my use of words like "skillz" and "Muslim stalker" and similar words. I apologized to you for behaving that way. And once again, I'm sorry about that.

And still, I didn't intend to convey too much seriousness nor offensiveness in my first couple of posts in this thread, and that's why used all those tongue and winking emoticons at the end of my sentences. I don't really use those emoticons when I'm being totally serious with a member or when I put my "mod hat" on. Unfortunately, I think you took it a little too seriously and you turned into a huge commotion after I PMed you.

5. Did I really reveal too much about you in that first post? No.

All I said was something vague: "I read your posts in X forum and I know who are. " <--- (which, again, was a mistake), but I didn't disclose any personal information about you out in the open. I only PMed you a link to a thread that contains a picture of you and your family (which is already public) and two other pieces of information, when you told me "go on and impress me," in the second post in this thread. But none of the other members saw that except you.

Also, you already told us that you are podiatrist, so I didn't think that you would react in such a way just because I said that I saw you in a podiatrist forum and "I know who you are." Those comments were inappropriate, and I apologized for doing that, but I didn't actually post any sort of personal information or details about you in the public arena ... no personal photos, telephone numbers, youtube videos ... nothing.


But, at least I learned a lesson from this and hopefully you (and everyone else) learned something too. We all made mistakes and mistakes are bound to happen.

I hope that you will reconsider and stay, but if you don't want to, then again, no pressure.

- Rayaan