First time you noticed something strange on a forum (any forum)

Stravinsk

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I've been doing forums for a very long time.

I usually use "Stravinsk", although sometimes I have used other names on other websites. I am also not the only Stravinsk that does online forums, or uses that name on various other internet media.

That said, I think by far the most involved I've been on any forum was CF. I approached it like most other forums, looking to get to know people and voice my thoughts and opinions. It is also the first online forum where I began to notice some very strange things.

When I was relatively new, I remember browsing a few people's profiles. Some people had pictures up. One thing I never forget is someone's face. I usually only need to see it once and that's enough. Names, yes, but faces no.

Well, some years later when looking at a profile I saw the exact same picture. I thought to myself "hey - I know I've seen that before, but the name is completely different". Strange. Then over the course of time I had a conversation with someone that was eerily similar to a conversation I had with another username sometime back. The details, I remember the details and the subject matter being very very similar.

This was all before getting perma banned and before I ever resorted to using a sock account. It was becoming apparent to me that people were starting new accounts or changing their names. That was the start of the strangeness, but not the most strange. On the other forum, there was a list of avatars one could choose from if one didn't have one or wanted to make their own. A particular Administrator had one that he always used. It was also on the list. After being temporarily banned, I came back and started a thread. A username using the same Avatar as the male Admin was one of the ones that responded - except now the gender was female. I immediately suspected that the male Admin had created the account and out of habit or mistake used the Avatar. It turns out I was wrong.

Another Admin, a female one, had borrowed that avatar and started a female account. This Admin thought it might be a good idea to test me or something - because it asked me if I wanted to send a link I was thinking of posting publicly, but instead to send it pm. The link was nothing serious, but it did contain quite a bit of profanity and textual sexual references - from bible stories but using modern profanity instead of the euphemisms found in the bible.

Now I didn't know this (about the account being the female Admin's and not the male Admin I suspected) until quite a long time later, when this female Admin said (under her main account), and in passing that our last conversation had occurred at (this date). So I thought about that, and remembered who I had a brief conversation with at that time. It wasn't just this though - when I had implicated the male Admin on the board's private area - I noticed that this particular female admin visited the account and right at that point the avatar was made blank.

So very interesting.

You know what else is interesting? Some of the Admin have multiple accounts on Facebook. I've blocked quite a few of them.
 

Rens

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It was strange that it was allowed to make socks on cf. First I always posted on Dutch forums and you got a ban if you made a sock and socks were only made to bypass a ban. But there even the mods just said in a public thread that they used socks. No wonder you get all kind of accusations and speculation and nobody trusts anyone anymore.
Lol when they banned me and all my socks I was afraid that it was in the hands of trolls, that the owner was a troll, I read that in a review, so I wanted to warn people I knew, so I asked an ex boyfriend I knew from a Dutch forum, who never used his account, if I could use his to post there and I'd pm people under his name: watch out with this site! The owner is a troll! Hahahahahahahahahahaha I wonder why I got no response and why people didn't trust me LOL.
 

Stravinsk

Composer and Artist on Flat Earth
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It was strange that it was allowed to make socks on cf. First I always posted on Dutch forums and you got a ban if you made a sock and socks were only made to bypass a ban. But there even the mods just said in a public thread that they used socks. No wonder you get all kind of accusations and speculation and nobody trusts anyone anymore.
Lol when they banned me and all my socks I was afraid that it was in the hands of trolls, that the owner was a troll, I read that in a review, so I wanted to warn people I knew, so I asked an ex boyfriend I knew from a Dutch forum, who never used his account, if I could use his to post there and I'd pm people under his name: watch out with this site! The owner is a troll! Hahahahahahahahahahaha I wonder why I got no response and why people didn't trust me LOL.

The average person cannot make an account there and expect to remain anonymous. Not if they are already well known. It's much more than IP. They analyze your browser data (I was caught on that), even HTML 5 canvas imaging that can uniquely identify your particular computer by it's hardware if you're using the same one. Then of course people using the same emails. I used to look at my sock accounts - I was caught on that. I used to look at my Stravinsk account - was caught on that. Every time I mentioned one or two particular posters - caught on that, lol.

I don't know much about either the previous owner or the new one, and that which I do know I can't say.

About allowing socks - I think it's allowed first because it gives the illusion that the forum has a massive member base. That attracts advertisers, and that forum is money centered. Secondly, it allows people who don't know any better to think they are anonymous when really they are not. Someone I friended on the board told me once that it was perfectly fine to have an account for privacy reasons. She told me one of her socks. She had not been banned, just using a sock for privacy. That sock didn't post too much, but I did notice that quite a few staff had checked it out. Anything she said with it that was sensitive (not that she did, I don't know) could be used against her.

If one wants privacy - adopt a new IP, browser details, go to a totally unrelated forum and use a new username, and never refer to your old one or where you used to post. And if you want to talk to friends, make sure they are using new usernames as well.
 
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