Some online discussion groups have been offered on sites set up by the authors of books on the subject. Some online groups are public and anyone can read and write on the site. Others require people to become members using an email address or user name and a password but letting almost anyone join. Occasionally such groups may block a person who violates the moderator's rules of conduct but it is easy for someone to make up another user name, get another email address, and join again.<\/p>\n
\nSome people make up multiple identities to use in a group. Reasons for
\ndoing this can vary from someone wanting to have a ready made friend
\nwho will always be in agreement with them to someone trying to disguise
\ntheir identity for reasons of their own. Reasons for using multiple
\nidentities could be positive or negative. There are estranged relatives
\nwho do stalk the people from whom they are estranged. Both stalkers and
\nstalkees might create multiple identities. It’s a strange strange world
\nwide web we inhabit!<\/p>\n
A couple of years ago a site was set up specifically for parents who were
\nestranged by their children and that site is semi-private. They attempt
\nto prevent adult children who had estranged their parents from joining.
\nDiscussion groups there are only for parents who are mourning the loss
\nof their children. The group owner\u00a0 doesn’t want the group to be
\npublicized. I am not the group owner and I do not belong to it. I had
\noffered to publicize it when it was first set up and the owner told me
\nthat they did not want it publicized. I can understand why.<\/p>\n
Some public discussions of family estrangements take place on sites
\nthat have as a main subject something that has nothing to do with
\nrelationship issues but which offer forums that provide an opportunity
\nfor registered members to start discussions on topics of their own
\nchoosing. These are generally public discussions and are open to anyone
\nto read and write. However, participants usually can create their own
\nuser names and their email addresses are generally not shown with their
\nposts.<\/p>\n
Private online discussions can be set up in such a way, thanks to the
\nmany services offered online, that it is almost impossible for someone
\nto find and read the postings, assuming that all of the members’
\ncomputers are secure and not accessible to anyone else and that no
\nspyware has been installed on their computer. In one situation that I
\nknow of, a woman’s private email to a group moderator was read by her
\nson who had estranged her and who had not lived with her for some time.
\nHe used spyware installed on her computer to monitor her online. Both
\nher son and her ex-husband used spyware on her computer to do this at
\ndifferent times. She did not know whether her son had installed the
\nspyware that he used to read her email. Someone had put something on
\nher computer. <\/p>\n
The son never did get into the discussion group as far as we know as
\nthe mother didn’t receive postings as emails. He only saw the email. If
\nshe had set her group postings to be received as emails he would have
\nbeen able to see all of the group’s discussion, including the private
\nposts of people he didn’t know. If that had occurred and he had wanted
\nto, he might have been able to contact others who were related to these
\ngroup members and reveal their postings to them. That could be
\ndisastrous for those who had trusted that their postings would be
\nprivate within the circle of that group. There is probably spyware that
\nis more invasive than the spyware that he used and that would have
\ngiven away her password and user ids that she used to log into the
\ngroup. Then he would have had even more access to the group and could
\nhave posted under her user name if he had wanted to.<\/p>\n
If there has been an opportunity for someone to put spyware on a group
\nmember’s computer, then there is a risk, no matter how private the
\ngroup, that their password and user name and membership in the group
\nare known and that the specific person whom they most would not want to
\nread their posts can see everything. If that occurred, then there is
\nalso the chance that the identities of other members of the group would
\nbe known to that person and there could be further consequences and
\ncompromises to the privacy of other members with unfortunate results.
\nThis is something to be aware of when joining or creating an online
\ngroup. It may be rare that this happens but it is something to be aware
\nof as a risk. <\/p>\n
One daughter who had estranged her mother for ten years joined a
\npassword protected group on family estrangement when she had a conflict
\nwith her father and stepmother. Her mother had belonged to the group
\nfor a year and a half and had been invited to join the group by the
\nowner when it was first formed. At the time that the daughter began
\nposting on the group, the mother hadn’t posted anything for six months.
\nThe daughter searched the group archives for her mother’s posts and
\nthen became enraged. The daughter did not see her behavior as an
\ninvasion of her mother’s privacy but only as an example of her mother’s
\nfoolishness for posting in a group on the internet where her postings
\ncould be found by anyone. The mother was not able to establish any kind
\nof productive dialogue with the daughter in the group and subsequently
\nquit that group and created a private group which could be joined only
\nthrough invitation.<\/p>\n
The danger of a password protected group to which almost anyone can
\njoin is that it can become too large for anyone to know anything about
\nthe identities and backgrounds and agendas of the members. So if
\nprivacy is important, as it can be in many situations, then you must
\nknow the risks associated with joining a group with a large membership.
\nCreating another email address and a user name that is not associated
\nwith you personally and not ever using real names or other identifying
\ndetails in your posts are good strategies if you join a large
\ndiscussion group. As well as being certain that no one has ever put
\nspyware on your computer.<\/p>\n
In the next post I will talk about the opportunities that exist to create your own private online discussion group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some online discussion groups have been offered on sites set up by the authors of books on the subject. Some online groups are public and anyone can read and write on the site. Others require people to become members using an email address or user name and a password but letting almost anyone join. Occasionally…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,69],"tags":[62,70,155,54,120,41,154,153,156,187],"class_list":["post-118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-for-parents","category-therapeutic","category-weblogs","tag-alienation","tag-cutoff","tag-daughter","tag-estrangement","tag-estrangements","tag-family","tag-father","tag-mother","tag-son","tag-support"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}