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Are My Items meant to be public?

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Calvin put up a post where he noted how Google is tracking Twine.  Using that, I was able without much difficulty to access my own and other people's 'My Items'.  Is 'My Items' meant to be accessible only to that particular user or are they meant to be visible to everybody?  I looked at a couple of people's for only a few seconds, just to test, so not much invasion of privacy.  Also everything I noticed was public.  I didn't search in detail to see if there were any private items listed in other people's 'My Items', for obvious ethical reasons.  But if 'My Items' of any user can be viewed by any other user does that mean private items are listed in the same way and can be thus viewed by anyone?

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  • Public Comments

    • Marc Buyens Marc Buyens
      14 months ago


      I did some limited testing on this some weeks ago and indeed, items in the 'My Items' twine seemed to be visible. However, while trying to open one of these items as a non-registered member, I got a 404 error. Of course, this tells us nothing about what would have happened while accessing these items as another registered member.
      Nevertheless, I would prefer better privacy protection, so that private items or twines are always completely hidden.
      Twine Users Forum

    • Ralph Mercer Ralph Mercer
      14 months ago


      Hi
      I have alway viewed the "my items" as a record of my activities on twine, I use it to find items that I have posted, collected or shared with the twine community. if the truth be told I never looked at it as a personal collection feature, but more of a record of my activity in the twine community. However that is not to say there shouldn't be a "make private" feature (I can say this because I have no idea how hard it is to do) for users who wish more online security or at minimum an advisory on the openness or privacy level of the "my item" list.

      cheers
      Twine Users Forum

    • shal shal
      14 months ago


      Items of users may be related to comments they post (as items are collected automatically right after posting). That may explain why whether google can access user profiles, its spiders may get direct access to users' items.
      Twine Users Forum

    • Nova Spivack Nova Spivack
      14 months ago


      The items in your 'My Items' section is private and cannot be accessed by the public. Let us know if you have reproducible results to the contrary that we can test. It's highly unlikely that this is possible, but we'll certainly take a look.
      Twine Users Forum

      • facyla facyla
        14 months ago


        The only "private" items i could access to without logging where private items that were copy-pasted manually - i couldn't find any private items leak*.
        btw, not all items in My Items are private (i mean, collected ones, the ones that were shared with other twines, etc.)

        => Maybe the My Items title isn't clear enough ? why not call it "My Twine" ? (for a member, it's HIS Twine actually - the Twine he sees)

        * check made using http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Afr%3Aofficial&hs=rQv&q=site%3Atwine.com+%22private+note+added%22&btnG=Rechercher&meta= , http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Afr%3Aofficial&hs=mla&q=site%3Atwine.com+%22private+bookmark+added%22&btnG=Rechercher&meta= and http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Afr%3Aofficial&hs=mla&q=site%3Atwine.com+%22private+bookmark+added%22&btnG=Rechercher&meta=
        Twine Users Forum

      • Al Wood Al Wood
        14 months ago


        I think I have the results you asked for, but I shall send a private note rather than announce publicly how to do it.
        Twine Users Forum

        • Al Wood Al Wood
          14 months ago


          I have just posted a note to you, Nova, explaining how to access a private item. I just did it, as far as I can judge, so it is possible and I have explained how to do it and invited you to do the same to my private item.

          Maybe I am missing something, but the item I opened was labelled private, so I think I have done what you said shouldn't be able to be done. And I am not a techie by the standards of many people on this site, so if I can do it so can lots of others. But maybe what I did was not what was meant and you know this already. Quite possible, but I thought I had better flag it.
          Twine Users Forum

          • Al Wood Al Wood
            14 months ago


            It seems, from Nova's explanation, that the reason I was able to open the private item concerned was that I had permission to view that item from membership of the twine it was posted to.

            And Nova says that private items are not visible at all to those who do not have permission to view that item.

            Apologies if I raised a red herring, but I thought it was better to be safe than sorry.
            Twine Users Forum

    • James Todd James Todd
      14 months ago


      if you are referring the items one can find on a twine member's profile page, eg twine.com/user/james, the presented information is filtered by the access permissions of the viewing party. resulting data will either be public (aka world readable, readable by all), readable by the twine members to which the item is hosted within, or readable by the viewing user instance. data that has visibility credentials other the those described above will not be presented for display.

      if this is not the case please provide some reproducible steps so that the issue can be further investigated.

      if you are not referring to the user's profile data as described above, can you provide more information (ie url path)?

      hth.
      Twine Users Forum

      • Al Wood Al Wood
        14 months ago


        James, as mentioned above, I sent a note replying to Nova's query above. If you like, I can send the same note to you.
        Twine Users Forum

      • Al Wood Al Wood
        14 months ago


        See my reply to Nova above. It is possible to go into somebody's 'My Items', but it is not possible to see private items there you do not have access to. Sorry to raise a non-existent problem.
        Twine Users Forum

    • Marc Buyens Marc Buyens
      14 months ago


      You are right. This seems to be OK now. I repeated the test I did earlier and I no longer find any private items when I access my profile page or the My Items list as a non-registered user. Great!

      MarcB
      Twine Users Forum

    • Nova Spivack Nova Spivack
      14 months ago


      Private (personal items that only you can see) items are not shown. However when you bookmark something into a public twine it will show up as a public bookmark in your My Items as well. Public items in My Items are visible, as they should be, since they are public. In addition, you can see any item you have permissions to see, such as private items in private twines you are a member of.
      Twine Users Forum
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