Considering Retiring my Account

OK, before we get back to Transilvania and vampires :)

That interactive map displays the location of your internet provider. It isn't such a big deal, you are one out of at least 10,000 other users connected through that provider. In a big city with almost 2 million inhabitants, I think that's almost no privacy issue.

i honestly don't understand why this is such a big deal. we aren't showing IP addresses. we're showing ROUGH locations. you don't have to show your name, or anything about yourself. even if it locates you within 1,000 feet (which is HIGHLY unlikely - it's probably a 2 square mile radius), there are hundreds or thousands of people in that same radius, and unless you are walking around with a sign around your neck with your Chess.com username, how would someone recognize you?

i mean, let's take you. your name is "an_arbitrary_name". let's say i even knew which street you live on - what would i do with that? start knocking on doors asking for "an_arbitrary_name"?

i put my real name, my picture, and my city on here (i'm in mountain view). i'm one of the most visible people on the site. i've never felt like someone had the slightest chance of finding me through the map, of all places. 

perhaps what we do is only show you on the map if you have put in your location? then you can put in your city name and not be worries. we can not use IP address to find you. that's a reasonable suggestion. 

That's exactly what I would like!

I have to say that's a dissappointing aproach to privacy in such a crowded site. Users who leave their location info and country blank reveal their ISP location and in most cases without realizing it, and it doesn't have to be about a killer knocking on your door. it's just a piece of information you may not want to share with others.

I don't think the system is ideal when a random false location info works better than no info in sake of online anonymity.

+1.

Erik, it's a potentially big deal for at least one reason I can think of.  Some people, maybe even the OP here, are women and play from countries where intereacting with a man can be punished with horrible consequences.  I think you know what I'm talking about, right?  If a woman is naive enough or not experienced in the ways of the internet she may well be very easy to "track down", particularily if she's from a rural location.   The consequences for such a woman might be horrendous.  Why put anyone at risk in that way?  It seems to me alot of the "conflicts" we have here, be it about what kind of words are okay  or what kinds of images are ok are largely about cultural differences. 

It's extremely ethnocentric to hold the belief that no harm could possibly come to someone as a result of this feature, which virutallyl everyone agrees adds nothing of value to your website.  Not everyone accesses this site from big cities.  Some are accessing it from tiny towns and hamlets where there might only be a very small number people with web access.  Any of those people could be at grave risk in certain cultures. 

Yeah, this complete disregard for the personal privacy is dissapointing. I put in my hometown on the information, mainly because it's the second biggest town in Sweden, so I felt safe doing so. But with the help of the map you can narrow my place down to creepingly close to where I actually am.

Granted, this enough isn't enough to track me down, but the more information that chess.com willingly shares, the easier it becomes.

I've been tracked down and threatened by someone from the internet before, and while nothing happened, it wasn't pleasant.

I really hope something is done quickly about this.

Yes, but you can change/hide location there. You can change your location here either, but the main problem is that when you leave the location & country section blank, supposing you haven't disclosed any information on your location, but in reality that very concern for your privacy reveals your ISP location and most don't know about it. In playchess, it's obvious to the average user where they appear to be on the map.

Which is public, right?

Anyway, chess.com could let its users decide whether or not to be shown on that map. It's not a big deal to program this.

IMO, if users are concerned about a lack of privacy, those concerns should be respected by the owner of the site.

i'm not opposed to making this change, but i have to be honest - i feel there are some pretty ridiculous arguments being made. still, i'm not going to debate it because obviously people feel strongly and public forum debate never resolves anything. but "ethnocentric" and "complete disregard for privacy" seem to be pretty extreme claims. i'll try to have this done in the next few days. until then, if you're nervous about someone finding out the general vicinity of where you live and somehow associating your fictitious name with your actual persona, please change as much personal info on the site as you like until you feel comfortable. 

thanks for bringing this to my attention, and sorry to anyone who is upset by this. 

No, it's not. I mean, normally it shouldn't be public information without the user's approval.

Yeah! What is Don Erik going to do now? Definitely is an enormously privacy breach, violation and it shows a total disregard for the consumers of this site.

What where you thinking Don Erik?

You should ask previously for permission etc.etc.

This move is a total disaster. I have no idea who was the chairman of this thing but really… what the %$#@! Is this Orwellian or what?

Its your move Don Erik.  Everybody is waiting

Where I live theres cctv cameras all over the place and noone cares.Who cares where you live.Its not as if your address is revealed.

He he he, id like to have some pretty creatures locate me EXACTLY where I am, and come over right away.

To be honest, Afaf is right about this particular issue, but remembering some of her earlier comments, I can't help laughing in myself a little.

No we're not.  That extra couple seconds you spent changing to red font allowed Erik's response to beat your rant.  

Now this is an explanation. It’s like coming from a high school boy. Not from a skilled entrepreneur.

Obviously this thing has catch Don Erik out of tempo.

Comparing yourself to any user of  your site is quite a number.

Do we have to spell all the reasons why that move with the map is WRONG?

Come on, put your Chairman Panama Hat and tell us what everybody wants to hear from a chairman that is in charge and has genuine concernsabout its customers, because we are all customers here. Correct?

Thank you Don Erik!

Peace 

It's more that the site is willing to display personal information about its users without gaining their explicit permission.  I don't really care about being on the map (it's not like anyone would really care anyway), but I can understand why others would view it as an unacceptable breach of trust.

And nobody cares about CCTV, really?  Last time I was working behind the bar in a North-East town just slightly south of your border, all the old folk were constantly whining about it!  And with good reason, too...

biting tongue on responses. ;)

working to fix it so everyone will be happy.