Why is my photo coming up on various blogs/forums?

MacAllister said:

I'm kind of a maniac

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and there you have it, folks!


I replied to a post on Kobo's blog the other day...about their new upgrade...and shockingly, when my post appeared---there's my little doggy staring back at me. My gravatar---that I received through my wordpress account is of France. I think at one time or other I was prompted to accept it as an online identity of some sort. I just didn't realize at the time what I was agreeing to. And at the Kobo site all I used was my email address too. It was a bit freaky...

Ugh... this kind of things should be disallowed! When you register with something (like WordPress), they can't just do something like that without your consent first. Suddenly you have an account and your information is posted on another site? That should be illegal.

maestrowork said:

Ugh... this kind of things should be disallowed! When you register with something (like WordPress), they can't just do something like that without your consent first. Suddenly you have an account and your information is posted on another site? That should be illegal.

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You have to choose to use Gravatar on your account at the WordPress blog/site, and you have to either have a Gravatar account, or create one at that point.

Sadly, this kind of thing is just going to get more prevalent. See Facebook's recent moves toward linking sites together, and sharing user data with sites.

It's often not clear when or who you're sharing information, pictures, etc. with online anymore. So if you have personal data you don't want galumphing all over the interwebz, it's best to never share it with any site in the first place. (This has always been true, but increasingly so.)

Medievalist said:

You have to choose to use Gravatar on your account at the WordPress blog/site, and you have to either have a Gravatar account, or create one at that point.

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Hmmm, okay, but my understanding was that Aruna didn't and never open a Gravatar account, even though she did use WordPress. Maybe I'm wrong...

Every little checkbox....

maestrowork said:

Hmmm, okay, but my understanding was that Aruna didn't and never open a Gravatar account, even though she did use WordPress. Maybe I'm wrong...

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Gravatar and wordpress are owned by the same company.

Twitter
Facebook
Yahoo
Google
Wordpress

These companies are all linking together accounts, web site logins etc.

aruna said:

That's right. I opened a WordPress account maybe years ago, and must have uploaded that photo at the time. It's so old I don't even have a copy of it on my HD any more.

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Yeah, it's all Auttomattic, and a single TOS.

Aruna, I bet if you email the support address from the email account associated with the image and explain your discomfort they'll help you out.

Tirjasdyn said:

Gravatar and wordpress are owned by the same company.

Twitter
Facebook
Yahoo
Google
Wordpress

These companies are all linking together accounts, web site logins etc.

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Ah, okay. Gotcha. It's like Blogger uses Google login, etc.

maestrowork said:

Ah, okay. Gotcha. It's like Blogger uses Google login, etc.

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Yep yep.

With larger companies buying up internet property it's interesting to see how they "shrink the web". Signing up for one service about 12 years ago means I now have a yahoo login for all kinds of things. The only process I find similar is company mergers as an employee.

Interesting stuff in this thread. I must admit that for years I have kept a couple of 'anonymous" email accounts which I use whenever I have to put in an email address for any site, other than an online retailer. The user profiles for those accounts have never had an image uploaded, and the profile data is ... ah-hem, not quite accurate. I googled myself a while ago, and so far, so good as far as links and images go.

You have to really watch this photo tagging business too ... I never tag any of my pics online that show other individuals with their real names.

I don't have an FB or MySpace account, but I am interested to see what this new Diaspora lot come up with.

gravatar automatically reads from your e-mail address, if you have input your e-mail address somewhere, it is likely that any image co-related by your e-mail will be displayed, Although Iḿ not certain as to why when you didnt upload it directly to gravatar and they still made it appear. I would e-mail to [email protected] or something to tell them to deactivate or delete your account after certain time.

Tirjasdyn said:

Gravatar and wordpress are owned by the same company.

Twitter
Facebook
Yahoo
Google
Wordpress

These companies are all linking together accounts, web site logins etc.

Click to expand...

Yahoo and Google, are you sure?