Forum Problems

I'm a people person, but I never dreamed I would have so many "circles" to which I belonged. I'm talking about forums, and they are one of my favorite things to do. Unfortunately, they can be a tad bit time consuming. Actually, I got in over my head. At one point, I belonged to about 8 different forums. It all started when....

A few years ago, actually two, I was diagnosed with an extremely painful condition called Chronic Interstitial Cystitis. Many people think that the term "cystitis" means that the condition is simply characterized by a bladder infection. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is actually no bacteria present.

Anyway, I had a kidney stone in the summer of '07 that landed me in the emergency room. Long story short, I was refered to a Urologist. Even though the stone had passed, I was still having a lot of pain and going to the bathroom about 20+ times a day. I thought I had a bladder infection, but pathology proved different. After a cystoscopy, my Uro diagnosed me with IC. Weirdly enough, I had 6 more kidney stones to contend with, 3 in each kidney. (Yes, I had to pass everyone of them.)

Well, anyway....the sudden onset of this terrible condition caused me to do a great deal of web research. In that research I found some health related forums. Bingo! I could actually find people that had this terrible disease! Up to this point, I had never even heard of IC, much less know anyone that had it. I joined several IC related forums, but then I decided to spread out. I ended up joining one called HysterSister, and then a political forum, and a couple of Baptist forums. I went hog wild!

Now, I'm not into Facebook or Myspace, not my thing. In fact, this blog is the most personal thing I have on the web. But one thing that bothered me was that on the first few forums I joined, I saw people posting their entire name, address, etc. Can we say TMI...too much info!?!?! I always came up with some catchy log in name, but there was no way in this world I would post my real name and address. Too many freaks in the world, and they love to hang out on the internet.

I had one situation where someone sent these weird emails to me, acting as if they knew me and wanted to see me, blah, blah, blah....They kept telling me that they were daily getting closer and closer to my residence. What freaked me out is that the email address it came to was one that I rarely used. In fact, I only used it for all the forums I joined and my Paypal account. (I didn't want my main email address getting bombarded with a bunch of mail that I would rarely read). Another thing that freaked me out was that I was lame on my feet. I had just had foot surgery, and I kept thinking, "Is some nut going to show up at my house? I won't even be able to run!!"

I finally received the "punch line" of the email. What was eerie was the fact that the email address these letters came to were only used to sign up on the 8 or so forums I belonged to. Hmmm.....I finally decided that it had to be one of the forum moderators. Nice...someone was having a lot of fun taunting me.

One of the health forums I belong to just recently had a post about the nonsecure status of that site. People were posting all kinds of panicky responses. You could just about hear them screaming! They were warning people, "Don't post your real name, Don't use your real name as a login name, Don't post your location, Don't talk about your work place! People can trace your address!" One of the members said they could google their login name, and everything they had posted on the health forums came up in the search results.

I was sitting there thinking, DUH! Exactly why I don't use my real name to begin with. It's not that I want to pretend; I just don't know who is behind another computer screen. I have never posted anything that I didn't want others to read. That health forum had a lot of people changing their avatars, screen names, etc. I just sat back and breathed a sigh of relief that I didn't have to worry about a lack of security. If people are ashamed of what they post, it might not be a good idea to post it!

There's been other issues...I've had my password intentionally changed by either a hacker or a moderator. I guess they were having some innocent fun, but it really compromised the integrity of the site. I've had my profile changed without my consent. Needless to say, I don't post of those kind of forums. Actually, I never did. And now I'm glad. What in the world would a rogue hacker or rogue administrator do my with actual words?? My guess is twist them. Whoever it was, they were also writing on other guestbooks and forums under my screen name. I'm not sure what they thought they would accomplish by doing that. I guess some people are hopelessly bored.

Well, I can honestly say that I don't have enough time to post on all the forums I'm a member of. I got so carried away, I can't even remember the web address of some of them! I enjoy engaging in conversation and healthy debate, but it can be way too time consuming. I try to make my blog the primary place of voicing my opinions and concerns. And unless there's a really good hacker out there, I don't have to worry about someone changing or twisting my words.