How do you keep your "online life" private from the Comic Vine forum management team despite them collecting your data?

How do you keep your IP address and "online life" private from Comic Vine forum management despite the fact that they collect your data? With the data Comic Vine collects on you (like your email address and personal life details), they probably know who you are. Do you still feel safe and secure acknowledging the fact that an admin could possibly abuse that power if they wanted to?

Are you hesitant to post in forums other than CV for this reason?

Please elaborate on any responses or ideas you may have. If you use a VPN, please explain why you think it helps cover your tracks.

Thank you.

There is no online privacy. You keep your privacy to yourself and to known and chosen close friends. Online is your public life, under everyone's gaze and criticism. If you are unable to determine the border, get help, otherwise beware of backfire.

@cat-like24: A new avatar for a pure and innocent question ?

Well first off thank you for your response!

I know being online means you're already forgoing some privacy and I acknowledged what you said. But I should have clarified; I was curious to see if any one used VPNs on Comic Vine basically to help them hide themselves from admins or other people who can see your information on this website just to be on the safer side. Do you? I am aware however that it's nearly impossible to hide from things like say Amazon Web Services.

Also, this is an alternate account, it's not my "main" account. My pic has always been the same... But even if I did change my pic so what?

I mean, replace comic vine with virtually any website and it's the same. Comicvine isn't particularly unique in that regard. That's just internet.

@theinsufferable: That is true, however I brought up Comic Vine because that was the most relatable website to CV users other than say Reddit or some other website like this one. Generally speaking, do you think you are good at covering your tracks on the internet?

No, I don't use a VPN and I don't make any special efforts to hide. On the other hand, I am not in favor of anonymity on the internet, especially when posting content.

The remark about the avatar was just a tease without meanness.

@jacdec: Gotcha.

Ah, thanks for clarifying. : )

@cat-like24: Well, it's about where you draw the line. If you want to get really paranoid about it, almost every piece of tech you own can be used against you in some way. Your cellphone, computer, smart TV, telephone, anything you own with access to internet, cellular network, or similar infrastructures have the potential of spying on you, but what you do with that knowledge is yours to decide.

As for websites, there are different ways to hide yourself to different extents. Fake mails are a thing, VPNs are a thing, tor is a thing. But the answer to the ultimate question of whether you want to use any of that is your decision. You ask me if I'm concerned with CV having my email, and I'll counter that with do you trust google, yahoo, or whatever email service provider you use with your info? I mean, I don't know if you use gmail, but it's probably the most widely used email service, owned by the same company who owns the operating system running on around 70% of the smartphones in the world, and it collects all sorts of data from all these phones. Data we willingly give them. You know, their new phone, the Pixel 6, has a feature called "Now Playing" which, when activated, detects and lists all the songs you've listened to for you (think Shazam or track ID but running 24/7) by always listening in the background. Of course it says it's not sending any data to google, but this is also a device offering its users next level transcription capabilities, the likes of which you won't find on any other cellphone. Would you really trust it to not use these two together for Google?

I'm sorry if this sounds like answering a question with a question. I didn't mean to give a cop out answer. What I'm trying to say is that privacy is a very deep rabbit hole if you really want to think it through. As for the actual answer, I do know of different ways to give less data to websites, but the extent to which I use them depends on the website in question.

@theinsufferable: Thanks for your large response!

No worries man, you bring up some good points, but I appreciate your acknowledgement of my question.

I have acknowledged what you have said, however, if you're ever willing to share, let me know if you use VPNs on any forums regarding this matter! I know it's small potatoes, but I'm just curious.

Ikr They keep calling me and bugging me about writing comics and scripts

When it comes to Comic Vine, who cares, they're a small fry niche website

Uh, I never cared about Google and other data collecting sites that much since the likelihood of them focusing on me and doing something with that information besides showing me personalized ads and stuff is slim to none. Of course, I am conscious to not use sites that you can't trust. But large companies or even large sites probably don't care about me.

You can use a VPN, which secures your location from most Internet websites.

Doesn't bother me the slightest honestly.

This would be giving CV too much credit (forum management team lol), other then your email address and IP they don't collect any personal information or really anything that can identify you offline (other then a general geo location), same goes for most websites, even if you post personal info in the forums nobody is gathering and connecting it, gathering and storing that kind of data is impractical and expensive unless your website/business has a need for it. That said ad networks do collect more data on you and depending on the level of invasiveness they can put together a decent online/offline profile of you so that they can resell your info but they wouldn't typically share data/info with the website/business displaying those ads. Plenty of browser add-ons/extensions help with ad networks and privacy these days.

VPN's are overhyped, if you are doing something illegal or are doing something that violates a websites terms of service such as bypassing geo restrictions, trolling, bullying, hacking, downloading, etc. then you would probably use a VPN but if you are just worrying about your privacy or being tracked it isn't really worth it because of cost, performance and with shady or cheap VPN's you can leave yourself open to even worse online risks. The only legit reason to use a VPN is if you use unsecure public wi-fi but even that will only help so much and at this point anyone using unsecure public wi-fi is just asking for trouble.