If you have an avatar (a picture) here on AskWoody, make sure Gravatar doesn’t have any personal data

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Ax Sharma at BleepingComputer published an article that shows how a sufficiently motivate cracker can scan all of the entries at Gravatar.com and pick
[See the full post at: If you have an avatar (a picture) here on AskWoody, make sure Gravatar doesn’t have any personal data]

8 users thanked author for this post.

Steve, Berserker79, Mr. Austin, OscarCP, HiFlyer, Microfix, Alex5723, SueW

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Except for ‘display name’ all fields in my profile are blank.

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Same here.

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Nothing there (or here) that would identify me as a rl person

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I couldn’t login to the gravatar site, I had to log in to the WordPress site to see my info. Evidently it links my avatar to gravatar. and there is no info there in my WordPress account other than a first name and email address and an avatar linked to Ask Woody site.

Is that a problem???

Don't take yourself so seriously, no one else does 🙂
All W10 Pro at 22H2,(2 Desktops, 1 Laptop).

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Wandering Wolf ring any bells?
It’s that easy as well as your email address and name

Edit: to remove HTML 🙂

2 users thanked author for this post.

Nibbled To Death By Ducks, Microfix

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[Nibbled To Death By Ducks]

OK, I consider any of my email addresses and/or my name to be private info. That’s why I have this silly username. (In one of my past careers/lives I was a Buyer-try THAT; being in the middle of those that want it [and think their project is the only one in the company] and those that have it-or, say they have it….oh, boy, it really was like being NTDBD!)

Um, no Gravitar for me. Like I said elsewhere, (before I knew of this thread), sometimes “Less is more.”

Wish this site DID have an Avatar bin, but with so many users…ow.

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330 ("The Tank"), Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", 12GB RAM, Group "0Patch", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations. Linux Mint Newbie
--
"The more kinks you put in the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the pipes." -Scotty

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by Nibbled To Death By Ducks. Reason: clarity

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[CADesertRat]

anonymous wrote:

Wandering Wolf ring any bells?

Nope, and just to add, the first name is a nickname I made up.

Don't take yourself so seriously, no one else does 🙂
All W10 Pro at 22H2,(2 Desktops, 1 Laptop).

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by CADesertRat.

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Since there is no way no add an avatar to askwoody directly (at least no way I can find), and I do not have an avatar displayed and I have no gravatar account I assume this has nothing to do with me at all.

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Correct, if you do not have a Gravatar account, there is nothing to check over or be concenrned about.
The default avatars (grey ones) have nothing to refer back to at all they are just default avatars.

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

2 users thanked author for this post.

JohnW, woody

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Thanks for the heads-up. My Gravatar profile is clean enough becasue ever since I set it up (11 years ago) I’d given only information on their site’s systems which is publicly available about me. I first started using Gravatar when my son turned me onto WordPress, which I used for my first talk show, Blue Planet Almanac.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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Maybe it’s a silly question, but I suppose that if I don’t have a gravatar account then there is nothing I should be concerned about, is that right?

BTW, while we are talking about avatars: I can’t see find anywhere on askwoody a way to remove/replace the avatar picture. I seem to recall that an avatar could be selected when I signed up for the account, but can anyone confirm that once we pick a picture (or no picture at all) then that’s the end of it?

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You can change your avatar picture any time by going to gravatar.com

(That’s how you originally set up your current avatar.)

1 user thanked author for this post.

Berserker79

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Thanks woody. To be honest I can’t recall ever hearing about gravatar.com before reading this blogpost nor visiting the place. I can’t find any password or login information for logging on gravatar and that’s really confusing me, since I usually keep a careful track of what websites I register an account with and the related login details…

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Try the “lost password” link on Gravatar. The email may be the one you use for Woody.

cheers, Paul

1 user thanked author for this post.

Berserker79

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That did the trick, thank you so much Paul! Turns out I had registered a WordPress account ages ago with the same email I use on askwoody, which explains why I had no recollection of visiting or registering on gravatar.

Sorry if this goes a little OT, but I was wondering: what if I close down my WordPress account entirely? Will this somehow affect my account on askwoody beyond losing my avatar (which I don’t care much about?

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[Paul T]

Berserker79 wrote:

Will this somehow affect my account on askwoody

Nope, your AskWoody account is on AskWoody only.

But we will lose your nice avatar.  🙂

cheers, Paul

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by Paul T.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Berserker79

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