Privacy issues connected with chatting

I have been using chess.com regularly since 2020 and I am glad to be there. I am also glad that I received an alternate account, which helped me a lot during the pandemic, when I was more or less unable to play over the board for many months. My alternate account is anonymous, but not really secret. I have revealed my identity to many people, and do not really hide it from the others.

In September 2022, chess.com restricted anonymous alternate accounts. I completely agree that one player should not be in the leaderboards twice, but I find muting the secret accounts too strict. I had not been spamming, yet I cannot message from my alternate account since then. I am not even able to message to my friends, not even to my main account. At the same time I sometimes see other users (mostly untitled, sometimes anonymous) trolling in the Titled Tuesday chat. And when I recently played from my anonymous account with the game chat turned on, there appeared some nasty messages from some spectators, though not necessarily aimed at me. (Hard to say.)

I have disabled the chat requests more than once, yet they appear again and again from time to time. Moreover, when I am playing a friend or another opponent, there sometimes appears that they would like to chat with me, and when I agree, it turns out that it was some other user who wanted to chat, and sometimes not even about chess. It would be nice if one could limit the conversation to the opponent(s).

As far as I know, the privacy settings also allow us to limit the conversation to the friends, or to allow conversation with everybody. If I choose the latter, a few people will ask me for a game, for training or which books would I recommend them. I do not mind discussing these topics from time to time, but I am mostly here to play chess with similarly strong opponents.

If I only restrict the conversation to friends, I will be unable to message to many other people, who might even be friends in real life, but who do not accept friend requests here, or accept very few of them. I doubt that I can continue such conversations even after restoring my settings to "Friends only", yet it would be good if there was such an option.

I agree. I would like to be your friend, but I respect your right to privacy and to choose who you want to talk to or not. I understand your discomfort and the inconvenience of being a highly prestigious player with whom everyone would like to talk.
I admire your chess and especially your personality.
I encourage you to be more active and create more posts. The community will thank you.
Thank you David for leaving this comment and your opinion.

Thank you for your support. My friends on chess.com are mostly friends and colleagues from OTB chess.

I do not post often here, as I am busy enough playing, both over the board and online. I occasionally annotate games or give interviews here or there, some of them probably can be found online. Have a good evening/day!

Me too

me three