Posting your address on the forum

Postcrossing News & Updates
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Hi everyone! :wave:

Just letting you know we’re changing our policy regarding posting addresses on the forum. Up until now, addresses were flagged and the moderation team would routinely remove them. We did this to protect the person’s privacy, since most topics on the forum are public and viewable without a Postcrossing account. We had no way to know if these postings were intentional or not, so it was safer to just remove them.

This creates a lot of work… but also some frustration from members who were aware of the risks and were ok with having their address made public.

So, we’re changing this policy. From here onwards, if you post your address on the forum and want to keep it there for everyone to see, you should add a note underneath it, letting everyone know that you understand it’s being posted on a public place. Something like this: “This is my address (or a public address), and I understand it’s being posted on a public forum”.

Otherwise, if the address is posted without a note, it will be removed.

To be clear, we don’t recommend that members post their address in public internet places, as we believe it’s safer to share your address privately. But if you really want to make it public, that would be the way to do it.

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Personally, I don’t want my address for public viewing, so any address without a disclaimer will still be removed, correct?

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And just to add because not everyone understands this or some forget this, most of the Forum is viewable & searchable by non-Postcrossers.

So it is possible that your address will get harvested by bots or people who could use it for spam mail or other nuisance type things.

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What is with adresses on profiles? I came along some profiles, where the member wrote his/her adress down.

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@happyLoo Yes! This is not about people sharing other people’s addresses though — that should not happen anyway. This is about people who want to post their own address in some of the forum topics.

@LC-Canada Good point to bring up — this is obvious to us (and the reason for doing this), but not everyone knows. I will stress this out a bit more on the post.

@_hope Again, we don’t recommend that people do this, but some do want to have their address there (for making direct swaps easier, we assume).

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It wasn’t obvious to me for quite a while (more than 18 months) as a member of the Forum & I remember how shocked I was to find out.

It’s easy to think we’re in our own little safe bubble here with no outside access, but we’re not, although I’ve not seen a lot of spammers on here so far - there was one just last month.

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Hello all. I do not want my address displayed to the world. The privacy of Postcrossing is what I relish.
My computer has been hacked twice and they still try and change my settings. I have special security in place now and feel more confident using the net. I hear so many stories from friends and email contacts of people losing money from their bank accounts. My warning is that we have to be more careful than ever.
Just a note, be careful what sites you click on or try and open.
I am becoming familiar with the forum and hope to comment soon. Cheers from Mamaduke.

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Yesterday I posted an envelope received from a postcrosser. It had my address on it and I mentioned that I was okay with the address being displayed. But I found that the postcard link had been removed. My text saying I am okay with the address display is still visible. This post below;

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I confess I don’t understand the problem, as I don’t see where your address is posted — nor do I see any log of a moderator having modified your post. :thinking: Maybe I’m missing something?

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Oh OK! I will add the link to the card. I was pretty sure I had posted it.

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You didn’t post the link you mentioned, but in the meantime another moderator stumbled on the image of an envelope with the address showing on your Gallery in Postcrossing… I’m afraid we don’t allow any addresses or back of postcards to be posted there. The galleries on the site are just for the image sides of the postcards.

The discussion and instructions on this topic apply only to addresses posted on the forum.

I hope you understand.

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Yes I got it. Thanks.

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I removed the address digitally and then reposted it. Meanwhile thanks for remembering this post I made so much earlier.