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Andrew Joiner
03-22-2018, 1:28 PM
I usually read fine print before agreeing to anything. I'm hearing people complain about being addicted to facebook and it's hard to cancel because it takes 90 days and one click reactivates your account.

They say Facebook is free because you are the product.

How is Sawmillcreek different from facebook?

Ken Barney
03-22-2018, 1:51 PM
Well.., it's spelled differently?

Lee Schierer
03-22-2018, 1:58 PM
And we don't allow politics...

I don't belong to Facebook.

John C Cox
03-22-2018, 2:09 PM
I basically quit using facebook about 3 years ago because the signal to noise ratio was HORRIBLE... It's like trying to find a needle in a 50-square mile trash dump...

Facebook was particularly bad about slagging every inch of your entire feed with sponsored content you cannot escape... And then - to make matters worse - they slag your feed with the junk they slagged onto your friend's feed because he made a comment about being aggravated that this was slagging his feed and merry Christmas - you get it too because you are his friend..

It's 10,000x worse than the "Let's show everybody what sort of idiots we are here" work email chains where every idiot clicks "Reply to All" and says "Why did you send this to me?"

And because it was an election - all the ad-mongers were slurping up as much vitriolic and hate filled political money as they could grab with both fists... Just think... $1.5 billion dollars was spent on MEDIA and internet ads during the last election... What can you get for $1 billion?.. They will sell you their soul for that kind of money and say literally anything you want... They will say anything, do anything...

Here - you may get the header/banner ads.. You may get a few sidebar ads - but you don't get 50,000 miles of video and sponsored "content" playing without your consent for every single sentence of actual post....

Andrew Joiner
03-22-2018, 2:16 PM
I'm asking if Sawmillcreek is different from facebook as far as security.
I'm not tech smart but are there potential risks to being on here?

Mike Henderson
03-22-2018, 2:30 PM
To me, the difference is that Facebook's whole financial model is to get you to disclose lots of personal information so that they can sell your information to advertisers*. SawMill Creek's financial model is that people contribute real money. I don't think the people who run SawMill Creek care anything about my personal life. And they certainly don't have a database of information about you and me which contains a lot about our personal likes and dislikes.

Bots from outside can read everything you and I post and use that data but that's just the way the Internet works and we can't avoid it. But SawMill Creek is not doing it. Facebook *is* doing it directly and selling what they learn about us.

Of course, Facebook is not the only one doing that. Other places you go, including Google, do the same thing.

Mike

*Facebook tries to learn your age, your school, your level of education, geographical location, income level, your political affiliation, etc. and they watch your "likes" to learn more about you. Everything about it is designed to allow the advertisers to finely target their ads to you. This allows Facebook to charge the advertisers more for advertising on Facebook.

Bruce Page
03-22-2018, 2:45 PM
I deactivated my FB account yesterday.

Jerome Stanek
03-22-2018, 2:52 PM
What is this Face Book everybody is talking about. I used to have a My Space years ago and don't even use Linkedin

Brian Nguyen
03-22-2018, 2:52 PM
Aren't there ads on SMC, though? Targeted ads from WW sponsors to WW forum users? Also we're required to use our real name... what's that all about.

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't really mind targeted ads when I go to a website. I'll admit to being a FB user, I mainly share my kids picture on there so that my family can see them grow. I also like the FB events planning feature for inviting friends and family to events, and vice versa. It works great for those purposes for me, and since I understand that nothing in life is free I'll allow Facebook to make a buck to sell ad space to advertisers. Might as well be ads for things that I'd have a smidgen chance of being interested in, as oppose to something totally off the reservation like uh... women's lingerie or ....umn... kites, or something.

Oh and if you don't want to deal with wacky politics on Facebook, then just be selective on who you add as "friend". Don't add that random person that you barely know that's a hardcore Democrat/Republican/party of the week. And if your drunk uncle is suddenly posting his b.s. every five minutes, then deleting him is a click of a button.



To me, the difference is that Facebook's whole financial model is to get you to disclose lots of personal information so that they can sell your information to advertisers*. SawMill Creek's financial model is that people contribute real money. I don't think the people who run SawMill Creek care anything about my personal life. And they certainly don't have a database of information about you and me which contains a lot about our personal likes and dislikes.

Bots from outside can read everything you and I post and use that data but that's just the way the Internet works and we can't avoid it. But SawMill Creek is not doing it. Facebook *is* doing it directly and selling what they learn about us.

Of course, Facebook is not the only one doing that. Other places you go, including Google, do the same thing.

Mike

*Facebook tries to learn your age, your school, your level of education, geographical location, income level, your political affiliation, etc. and they watch your "likes" to learn more about you. Everything about it is designed to allow the advertisers to finely target their ads to you. This allows Facebook to charge the advertisers more for advertising on Facebook.

Ryan Mooney
03-22-2018, 2:53 PM
There is practically very minimal difference in risk. It is primarily driven by what you're willing to share publicly (which Mike notes Facebook is more aggressive at pushing you to share more but whether or not you do is a personal decision).

One one hand you could argue the "risk" as it exists is mildly higher here because everything you say in the main forums is public whereas you can somewhat control the share scope on facebook (nefarious data mining activities aside).
On the other hand this isn't a forum that pushes sharing large amounts of personal information, nor does it build (as much of) a social graph (there is the friends stuff here but I don't know how much its actually used and its not really visible the same way).

From a practical matter, I know that you Andrew in particular are quite careful about your personal data so I would count your exposure as very minimal.

Don't share things you aren't comfortable with other people knowing regardless of the forum.

Facebook also has some very good communities, a lot of it depends on how you curate your feed. You also find some people aren't at all what you thought they were so that's perhaps also useful in a different way.

John C Cox
03-22-2018, 3:07 PM
I'm asking if Sawmillcreek is different from facebook as far as security.
I'm not tech smart but are there potential risks to being on here?

If the "Big Data" and "Targeted ads" here really worked - I would get tons of ads for new high end chisels... Nope.. Used car lots halfway across the USA and CNC machines....

what actually happened is that Facebook sold the routine user data collected on the website... The companies in question used AI techniqies to correlate the boring site data with their prediction of a political affiliation... And then they sent you "sponsored content" specifically either to fire you up hopping mad or discourage you depending on where you fell in relation to their goals...

Facebook wasn't doing the dirty themselves - they just sold the data to an analysis clearinghouse...

But they weren't alone - multiple companies including Google are doing exactly the same thing and on a massively larger scale...

Malcolm McLeod
03-22-2018, 3:35 PM
... Facebook's whole financial model is to get you to disclose lots of personal information so that they can sell your information to advertisers*.
...
Facebook *is* doing it directly and selling what they learn about us.
...
Of course, Facebook is not the only one doing that.
....

^Exactly. All the 'free' service sites use the same model. 'You' (the community of users) ARE their product. And the more you tell them, the better their product gets....

Someone can 'mine' this site to glean what they can about me. Here's hoping they find the consummate boor!:D

Ken Fitzgerald
03-22-2018, 3:37 PM
As surely as someone can design a software to protect data, another equally qualified person can design a software to hack that data.

I belong to FB for one reason, to maintain some contact with family members and a few select friends. I don't get my news there. I don't respond to surveys there. I have my security relatively tight there, limiting what can be viewed by the general FB public. I don't wash my "personal laundry" there. I joined FB late at the urging of some deaf friends but with immediate family members (children, grandkids, great-grandkids) ,some serving or having served in the US military, scattered from Kansas to Phoenix to Southern California to Seattle and back to Idaho, it's a convenient way to see occasional posts and photographs from their daily lives like the great-grandkids learning to ride their first bicycle. At one point we had family from here in Idaho, Houston to Virginia to Southern California to Idaho. Our family was scattered very nearly coast to coast and border to border. I never post anything there or here, for that matter, that I wouldn't say or admit to in public.

Here at SMC, if I wanted opinions about something personal, I'd only post it in the Lumberyard forum as it is outside the viewing of the Searchbots but of course, one must be a Contributor to post or read there.

There have been reports of prospective employers perusing FB and websites, in general, when considering hiring someone. People have claimed to been fired or not hired as a result of their posts and comments on the Web.

That is the world we live in. If you put it on the Internet it could become available for unauthorized use. Yet, I don't believe a lot of what I read on the Internet. Here at the Creek, we have hundreds of members who will admit, they read the terms of membership, and lied about their names when they registered here in the interest of personal security.

Rod Sheridan
03-22-2018, 3:49 PM
I don't have an FB account as I don't think people are really interested in what I had for breakfast or what my cat's doing.

My daughter deactivated her FB account previously.

Where I work, HR checks social media prior to hiring people, be careful of what you post. Stuff that seemed "funny" 10 years ago to you might cause you to lose a prospective job..........Rod.

P.S. I like rules and sites such as SMC that support polite, respectful dialogue. I also belong to vintage motorcycle site, and another wood working forum where I'm a moderator.

All of those sites have good moderation, I'm not interested in the least in a flame war......Rod.

Mike Henderson
03-22-2018, 6:35 PM
I don't have an FB account as I don't think people are really interested in what I had for breakfast or what my cat's doing.

......Rod.

I agree. And that's why I don't use Twitter. What could I possibly tweet that would be of interest to other people? I really doubt of my, or most other people, have lives, the details of which are of interest to other people.

Mike

roger wiegand
03-22-2018, 7:27 PM
I don't get the outrage. I've always assumed that pretty much everything I publish in the interweb is public and always will be-- I've found posts I made in the late '70's back when it was Arpanet and the recipe site at Stanford was the coolest new thing. Accordingly I only post things I don't mind having publicly known. FB's TOS pretty much says they will use your information for a very wide variety of things, making it very widely available. How can people be surprised? Much less outraged? FB is no different than any other interweb service, they traffic in information. Though the current management of SMC is benevolent I do not assume it will always be so-- once they sell out for a trillion dollars all the details of my woodworking habits will be widely available. I make sure I don't care, by not publishing anything here that I don't feel comfortable publishing to the world.

If you want to be reasonably secure use TOR and a VPN for browsing and public key encryption for your email, but if NSA or the Russians want to read it I bet they can. Best is to keep private things private.

I use and enjoy FB, I've become well acquainted with folks from around the world I might not otherwise have met. I have interactions on my various hobby interests that far surpass what was available to me previously. There are great FB groups on player pianos and old phonographs, for example, where the signal/noise ratio is very high compared even to the hobbiest print publications. I've reconnected with old friends and have active rekindled relationships on and off the computer. The price seems to be that ads can be targeted to me. Ad Block Pro eliminates about 95% of those so it doesn't seem such a big deal.

Larry Frank
03-22-2018, 7:34 PM
I use Facebook for only immediate family and it works fine. I think that I only have about 12 friends and limit my posts to them only and not to share with anyone else. Between it and my phone, it is a good way to stay close to family. I could care less about how many friends or likes I get.

I also assume that anything that I post on the web can be seen by anybody. I prefer using sites where I do not use my real name.

Jim Becker
03-22-2018, 7:41 PM
A lot of what the concern with Facebook is about is either controllable through settings or controllable by behavior. When folks use the "app platform", they fail to understand or acknowledge to themselves that they are exposing information that they have the ability to keep contained merely by not using apps, such as games, logging into other sites using Facebook credentials, etc. And folks who choose to participate in the ever-popular question and answer stuff or "like" and repost so-called (fraud) contests, etc., are further exposing themselves. Social networks can be a very good thing and are quite enjoyable. But using them without thought around personal information exposure can turn that around very quickly. Too many people join and just presume that the default settings are good enough. They are not.

My settings are customized to maintain the level of information exposure I'm comfortable with and I enjoy interacting with friends, HS classmates, family and folks with similar interests. I don't play games and the "app platform" was disabled on my account years ago. I don't post things publicly with minor exceptions which are carefully considered. I don't do any of the "question and answer" things nor do I fall for the fake give-aways...you know the ones where they are going to just give away several motorhomes to some lucky folks who like their page and re-post the "contest". I don't click on videos I frequently receive via Messenger...many have nefarious purposes. I do like pages and vendors I appreciate and find that in many cases, getting help is actually faster through social media than by other communication channels. I do review restaurants that I've visited and appreciated. And my new business will have both a Facebook and Twitter presence once things are up and running to my standards and the marketing benefits can be explored.

Mike Henderson
03-22-2018, 7:55 PM
I don't get the outrage. I've always assumed that pretty much everything I publish in the interweb is public and always will be-- I've found posts I made in the late '70's back when it was Arpanet and the recipe site at Stanford was the coolest new thing. Accordingly I only post things I don't mind having publicly known. FB's TOS pretty much says they will use your information for a very wide variety of things, making it very widely available. How can people be surprised? Much less outraged? FB is no different than any other interweb service, they traffic in information. Though the current management of SMC is benevolent I do not assume it will always be so-- once they sell out for a trillion dollars all the details of my woodworking habits will be widely available. I make sure I don't care, by not publishing anything here that I don't feel comfortable publishing to the world.

If you want to be reasonably secure use TOR and a VPN for browsing and public key encryption for your email, but if NSA or the Russians want to read it I bet they can. Best is to keep private things private.

I use and enjoy FB, I've become well acquainted with folks from around the world I might not otherwise have met. I have interactions on my various hobby interests that far surpass what was available to me previously. There are great FB groups on player pianos and old phonographs, for example, where the signal/noise ratio is very high compared even to the hobbiest print publications. I've reconnected with old friends and have active rekindled relationships on and off the computer. The price seems to be that ads can be targeted to me. Ad Block Pro eliminates about 95% of those so it doesn't seem such a big deal.

I think perhaps you misunderstand my objection to Facebook. I understand what they do with people's personal data. And if people understand what Facebook is up to and accept it, that's fine and good.

What I object to is the idea that the whole purpose of Facebook is to learn personal details about me and about my "friends" and to use that information to make money - they are monetizing my personal information. And because of my objections to what they do, I do not use Facebook.

I post things on the web, including technical papers and tutorials, with the intent of sharing those with others. If people get some value from that I'm happy. But I really don't like being *pushed" for personal information so that someone can make money from that information - the way Facebook does.

And while you may limit who can see your information on Facebook, one "person" who can see it all and harvest it is Facebook. If you use Facebook, they will get personal information from you. If you share pictures taken on a smartphone, they can get the location where that picture was taken and realize you were on vacation. That (and a lot more) goes into their dossier of you. If you do a "facebook login" at another site, Facebook knows you went there and that's in your dossier, also. In a very short time they know a great deal about you. Perhaps more than your spouse.

Mike

[There's been studies that have determine that if given some relatively small number of your "likes" they can categorize you with suprisingly high accuracy.]

Curt Harms
03-23-2018, 6:02 AM
The biggest risk to Facebook (IMO of course) is not to the typical Creeker but to the young and/or naive. Young people put stuff on Facebook and other social media.that they will likely regret in the future because they don't know any better. I'm not on Facebook but if I were for purposes of signing into another site, I'd probably have an account with a profile that would cause their analytic engines to get very confused.

Ryan Mooney
03-23-2018, 6:50 AM
When folks use the "app platform", they fail to understand or acknowledge to themselves that they are exposing information that they have the ability to keep contained merely by not using apps, such as games, logging into other sites using Facebook credentials, etc. And folks who choose to participate in the ever-popular question and answer stuff or "like" and repost so-called (fraud) contests, etc., are further exposing themselves.

Somewhat more disturbing is that when a person uses an app they are also often (but not always) agreeing to share their contacts/friends information as well as their own. Imaging that happened in real life:

Random Person: knocks on your door
You: opens door, hello
Random Person: Heeey I've got this cool IQ test you can take for free!
You: .. umm.. ok.. what's the catch
Random Person: Just share with me a bunch of your personal information, like show me your photo albums man.
You: not sure about this..
Random Person: Aaaaand a bunch of information you happen to know about all your friends

This starts to seem a wee bit creepier. I'm virtually positive that most people don't realize the latter part happens in addition to them sharing information about themselves. Unsurprisingly there was a HUGE uptick in these sorts of "free tests" (which were also personality profiling) right before the last several elections (yes several).

Again, it only matters as much as you're willing to share stuff and what you believe is/is not public so its mostly a mismatch of expectations. The recent kerfluffle also involved some likely TOS violations or at least some downstream contractual breaches that look like TOS violations (who knew what when determines culpability and I don't know any of that). I'm mostly with Roger, if you're putting things on the internet they're pretty public for the most part even when you don't expect them to be initially (I don't however share his trust in TOR for various reasons :cool:).

I do have to unfollow or otherwise hide a fair bit of garbage people "reshare" which is pretty annoying at times (you can somewhat easily block the shared-from accounts but they do move around some and people susceptible to getting hooked in liking that sort of thing tend to follow the spam to its new accounts unfortunately).

George Bokros
03-23-2018, 7:42 AM
I deactivated my FB account yesterday.

So did I. I did not use it and had next to no information on my page.

glenn bradley
03-23-2018, 9:21 AM
I'm asking if Sawmillcreek is different from facebook as far as security.
I'm not tech smart but are there potential risks to being on here?

The key element of your security is you. Use the mindset that anything and everything you have ever done online is available to those who know how to look. Do not expect to be "cared for". I have been banging this drum since we used to dial-in to bulletin boards. Take a picture of a check to deposit it and trust Verizon or AT&T to keep my traffic secure? Yeah, right. Not this Orwellian knuckle-dragger. I suppose being in the business since Automated Teller Machines were new and frightening molds my views somewhat. Its like getting a peek behind the curtain in any business. There are things the average customer really doesn't want to know. Unfortunately when it comes to your personal information security, you really need to know.

-- rant off.

Ole Anderson
03-23-2018, 10:30 AM
I didn't join FB until I had retired and had more time to spend there. When my credit cards get hacked, not likely from any of my FB activity. FB has allowed my to keep in touch with friends, now out of town, and relatives like never before. FB groups are a great way to imbibe in your hobbies or other interests. I even started a FB group for folks with LS engines in their Jeeps, nearly 150 members now after only a month. Joined a group called Church Sound and Media Techs, now over 47,000 members worldwide, the go-to place for all church tech questions and comments. Of course there are huge downsides, the biggest to me is the awful division you see politically with all of the name-calling, trolling and fake news. You just have to put on your filter hat and skip over that swill. Before I learned to golf 10 years ago, I thought it was pretty stupid to chase a little white ball around.

Andrew Joiner
03-23-2018, 10:34 AM
Somewhat more disturbing is that when a person uses an app they are also often (but not always) agreeing to share their contacts/friends information as well as their own. Imaging that happened in real life:

Random Person: knocks on your door
You: opens door, hello
Random Person: Heeey I've got this cool IQ test you can take for free!
You: .. umm.. ok.. what's the catch
Random Person: Just share with me a bunch of your personal information, like show me your photo albums man.
You: not sure about this..
Random Person: Aaaaand a bunch of information you happen to know about all your friends

This starts to seem a wee bit creepier. I'm virtually positive that most people don't realize the latter part happens in addition to them sharing information about themselves. Unsurprisingly there was a HUGE uptick in these sorts of "free tests" (which were also personality profiling) right before the last several elections (yes several).

Again, it only matters as much as you're willing to share stuff and what you believe is/is not public so its mostly a mismatch of expectations. The recent kerfluffle also involved some likely TOS violations or at least some downstream contractual breaches that look like TOS violations (who knew what when determines culpability and I don't know any of that). I'm mostly with Roger, if you're putting things on the internet they're pretty public for the most part even when you don't expect them to be initially (I don't however share his trust in TOR for various reasons :cool:).

I do have to unfollow or otherwise hide a fair bit of garbage people "reshare" which is pretty annoying at times (you can somewhat easily block the shared-from accounts but they do move around some and people susceptible to getting hooked in liking that sort of thing tend to follow the spam to its new accounts unfortunately).

Great explanation Ryan, thanks.

I'm amazed at how much my real, actual social life is affected by social media. The discussions my friends have tend to be about screen images. Especially younger friends and family. I see how addicting it is.

Heck, I love communicating here and this might be a social media of a sort. I've learned a lot and shared a lot of my experience. I've gotten to know some great people on here, even met some in person:).

Wonderful idea to keep it politics free here. I really can't see our forum being "mined" for much real gold. I don't think CNN or Fox want headlines like "99% of hand tool woodworkers can't agree on a sharpening method"

Carlos Alvarez
03-23-2018, 11:54 AM
How is Sawmillcreek different from facebook?

Not huge differences...

FaceBook allows you great control over the posts and items you see, and you can add things like Social Fixer to further gain control. SMC and other forums have very limited controls on that, but some.

Forums like this are generally topic-specific, FB is obviously general.

FB is a great tool to stay in touch with friends all over the world, and do things I wouldn't otherwise get an opportunity to do. I have also met up with people from forums, but it's less likely to happen since it's more focused on a topic.

A post on FB asking for wood advice will probably get very few if any useful responses. Here you will get a lot of useful ideas. Even though I have several woodworker friends on FB, it's really not helpful to talk about it there.

On both platforms you are the product, via ads. But FB goes a lot further in targeted data. I use an ad blocker and Social Fixer, so in both cases, my data is limited and I don't see ads.

Dennis Peacock
03-23-2018, 12:04 PM
I'm on FB and have been for a long time. It is my connection to old friends, family members that live far from me, and keeping up with my kids. I don't like everything about FB but as a Keep in touch tool with family and friends....it's a great tool for that.

Keith Outten
03-23-2018, 12:28 PM
Ad blockers will soon be the reason that SawMill Creek goes back to a user supported Community. I understand why this is happening but everyone should realize that there will be massive fallout from the changes ahead, not just here but everywhere on the Internet. When we block advertising we stop the funds that pay for all of the free services we enjoy including SawMill Creek.

Our advertising is being crippled to the point that we will soon be behind a curtain with no free access and zero search engine activity. At that point there will be complete privacy here, something a lot of people will enjoy but there is a flip side to that coin. I'm not sure at this point whether we will survive but we will adjust to whatever direction the majority here prefer to go as we always have.

FWIW Visitor access (Non Registered) will be the first thing eliminated when we convert to Xenforo in the near future. Anyone who is not registered will not be able to view threads, posts or pictures here very soon. When this happens we will lose all of our advertisers real quick and be sitting on our own bottom so to speak. In plain English I am not nor have I ever been in control of this Community...you are. Years ago we were an advertising free Community and when we grew beyond what we could afford to support you made the decision that you wanted advertising to pay the bills so we could continue free access for everyone. Now that you are blocking advertising your making the decision to go back to a user supported Community. I am fine with any decision the majority here makes and I will accept our fate no matter what happens.

FaceBook and all of the other sites that are taking advantage of people for monetary gain are driving the changes that are ahead. Unfortunately we are caught up in this mess and will probably have to make some very difficult decisions, like the ones I stated above, in the near future.

I have never sold any information from this site even though I have been offered serious money to do so. Note that your email addresses are not publicly accessible and that's what is most valuable here. I have never accepted offers I have received to amortize our advertising capability even though I have received at least ten offers every week for many years. Turning over the rains to these vampires would produce serious income but selling my soul is not something I can live with. I have also received dozens of offers to purchase SawMill Creek and with each offer the price goes up by unbelievable amounts. I have only sent out one mass email in over fifteen years and that was an announcement concerning our tenth anniversary. I receive plenty of handsome offers to mass email you people from companies all over the globe and I have refused every one of them. I could go on for hours sharing what I believe the differences are between SawMill Creek and Facebook but I think the majority of you know the score.

I'm still here which should prove to everyone where my heart is, I hope it does at least to the majority of you folks and all of my friends.
.

Ryan Mooney
03-23-2018, 12:32 PM
A post on FB asking for wood advice will probably get very few if any useful responses. Here you will get a lot of useful ideas. Even though I have several woodworker friends on FB, it's really not helpful to talk about it there.

On the contrary if you're in the right groups. I'm in a woodcarving group and a green woodworking group both of which are generally fantastic resources. The antique spinning wheel group has also been able to identify and help repair several interesting wheels (some of the woodworking there I perhaps take a small exception to in the context of restoring antiques but it is what it is). There are some other groups on there that I know are really good (the cigar box guitar group for instance) that I've refrained from joining because I don't need more projects :D

Carlos Alvarez
03-23-2018, 1:38 PM
On the contrary if you're in the right groups. I'm in a woodcarving group and a green woodworking group both of which are generally fantastic resources. The antique spinning wheel group has also been able to identify and help repair several interesting wheels (some of the woodworking there I perhaps take a small exception to in the context of restoring antiques but it is what it is). There are some other groups on there that I know are really good (the cigar box guitar group for instance) that I've refrained from joining because I don't need more projects :D

Yeah, groups vary a lot in quality. And even day to day. I'm in a Jeep group that's an off-shoot of the state Jeep forum. The anti-FB people whine that the FB group sucks and everyone there is stupid. The hardcore FB users whine that the forum is too hard to use (it is when you want to post trail pics with a mobile phone). Both have their good and bad. I use both. I get more hard info from the forum, in general.


Ad blockers will soon be the reason that SawMill Creek goes back to a user supported Community. I understand why this is happening but everyone should realize that there will be massive fallout from the changes ahead, not just here but everywhere on the Internet. When we block advertising we stop the funds that pay for all of the free services we enjoy including SawMill Creek.

I very much look forward to it. I tend to sample groups and forums, then support them if they have that ability. I run a large motorcycle forum, and simply collect donations as the funds dry up. So far (since 2002), it has worked perfectly. We have never had an ad, and I rejected a $10k offer to have our site join an ad-supported motorsports network. I'm not willing to trade my brain space for anything, but I will pay with cash if it provides value.

I don't understand how ads can make any sense for anyone. I've never clicked one in my life, and can't imagine why anyone ever would.

Ken Fitzgerald
03-23-2018, 1:43 PM
Carlos,

Maybe click on an ad to support a website like SMC.

Just because you and others don't necessarily agree with or understand Keith's business model, doesn't mean it isn't real or justified. It just means he has a different idea and method of operating his website to keep it open for both financial contributors and those who for one reason or another don't want to or can't contribute financially. Keeping the website open to everybody provides for a greater wealth of information on woodworking. A closed forum limits input.

For example, you would not be posting here expressing your opinion if it was a closed forum. How would you know you'd want to join if it was open to contributing members only? Rumors? Opinions of others?

Carlos Alvarez
03-23-2018, 2:44 PM
Carlos,

Maybe click on an ad to support a website like SMC.

Just because you and others don't necessarily agree with or understand Keith's business model, doesn't mean it isn't real or justified. It just means he has a different idea and method of operating his website to keep it open for both financial contributors and those who for one reason or another don't want to or can't contribute financially. Keeping the website open to everybody provides for a greater wealth of information on woodworking. A closed forum limits input.

For example, you would not be posting here expressing your opinion if it was a closed forum. How would you know you'd want to join if it was open to contributing members only? Rumors? Opinions of others?

Reasonable points, but I will never click on an ad, and I won't stop running ad blockers. I understand it changes the existing model, and so be it. Advancements in tech always involve pain and pressure. Keith makes his decisions, I make mine, and we see if they meet up. The market will decide what models are successful.

Chris Parks
03-23-2018, 10:11 PM
A couple of questions and a few observations....

Can I use FB through a VPN, if so is any functionality lost

Ad blockers are starting to be put into browsers or at least one and turned on by default, Opera is the first and there may be others. Users who do not explore setting and customise browsers would not even be aware of it.

Rich Engelhardt
03-24-2018, 6:00 AM
How is Sawmillcreek different from facebook?

They don't have.....drum roll please....... FARMVILLE!!! :D :D :D

(a couple of my co-workers made this from a picture of my brother in law & me in our "Farm gear" - the bibs)

Ole Anderson
03-24-2018, 9:51 AM
I run an ad blocker, not because of ads on SMC, but because of the predatory and sometimes overwhelming number of ads on most every other site, particularly news sites. So far in less than two years I have had 525,000 ads blocked. While typing this post, I just realized that AdBlock has the easy ability to allow ads to run on selected sites. Just click on the red button in the upper corner of your screen (PC version anyway) to open up the drop down screen and choose "Don't run on pages on this site". SMC is now on that list. I am a contributor. You can tell who supports the Creek by looking under their name on each post. Member? No. Contributor? Yes. Is it worth the cost of one Starbucks fancy coffee to support SMC for a year? You better believe it. $6 a year folks. Do it. Please.

Tom Stenzel
03-24-2018, 10:29 AM
Years ago in '84 or '85 I passed a yard sale and ended up buying an old hand plane because it seemed like a good idea to have one. It ended up in a box only to be found a couple decades later. Yeah, I should clean out my garage more often.

Finding my priceless relic of a bygone era I figured I could look it up on the 'net and see what it was worth. It wasn't long I found my plane shaped object was a steaming pile and worth it's value as a doorstop. But I found that out here. That's how I discovered Sawmillcreek. I stayed because my woodworking skills were never all that hot and I really could step it up a bit. I've learned a lot here. I doubt if anybody learned that much from me other than there's one crazy person in Livonia. But had the Creek been closed to visitors I would have never found it. Closing it to visitors would be a mistake IMHO.

I run two browsers, Palemoon and Firefox. Firefox is ad blocked, tracker blocked and all that. Palemoon isn't. I use what's appropriate. I normally don't try to block the ads here. I wouldn't mind the Robust lathe that's on the top of my page now.

- Tom

Mike Cutler
03-24-2018, 10:38 AM
I don't understand how ads can make any sense for anyone. I've never clicked one in my life, and can't imagine why anyone ever would.

I don't quite understand this.
Ads, as long as they don't end up being a re-direct to data mine, on the internet are no different than the stuff that comes into my mailbox on the street. A lot I look at as I'm walking to the recycle bin to toss them, but sometimes I keep them for a bit.
The same is here. Sometimes I see an ad and just wonder what it is. I don't click on a lot of them, but every once in awhile something interests me.

FB is vastly different than SawmillCreek. I have yet to see ads tailored to me on Sawmill Creek.
FB is data mining your browser and cache files in real time and tailoring the content to you. It is what it is, and always has been that way.If you want to do a test to prove it, start searching a subject you have zero interest in, and watch what happens on your FB page.
If you're on FB, or it's loaded on your computer, your info is being harvested. Period. Try to remove all the Facebook content from your computer sometime just for fun. If you want it all off, you're wiping your hard drive, and OS, and then doing a re-install from ground zero. It makes removing AOL look easy.

Keith
If you make it a user pay site, could you please give us a mechanism to pay other than PayPal. I do not have, nor will I have, a PayPal account.

Jim Becker
03-24-2018, 4:27 PM
Can I use FB through a VPN, if so is any functionality lost


Should work fine. But you should also make sure your privacy settings are what you want them to be. A VPN only "gets you there" in a more discrete manner. It doesn't protect you from information you divulge at the other end of the pipe. The VPN may provide some "locational privacy". However, what you say and do would affect what becomes known about you.

Harry Hagan
03-24-2018, 6:30 PM
What's Facebook?

Carlos Alvarez
03-25-2018, 2:12 PM
I've never met anyone outside of tech who actually understands what a VPN does. I'm not sure how, but people generally seem to think it provides some kind of privacy, and it really doesn't.

Keith Outten
03-25-2018, 3:56 PM
Mike,

We have always provided an address so people can send us a check even before we had a PayPal account. My sign company doesn't have a Merchants account, the fees are just to high for our type of service. Currently when people use PayPal it gets a percentage of the 50 cent per month donation and then we pay federal and state taxes so there isn't much left of the two quarters :) When people send checks we still pay the taxes but it saves the PayPal fees and that adds up over a year.

What saves us is the people who generously donate between two to ten dollars per month.

Concerning Visitors we host between 40 to 60 thousand people per day, obviously the vast majority are visitors. Its safe to say that almost all of our unregistered Visitors are using blocking software now so there is no advantage from hosting them anymore other than a small number of people will register when they visit. Visitors are consuming probably 90% of our bandwidth and that is a big part of our monthly budget. When they were viewing our advertisers banners they were a valuable resource but that is not the case today. I honestly hope that sometime in the future we will be able to open the doors and allow free limited access again should the Internet take another turn in a different direction. We may provide access to just one forum for Visitors so they can at least get an idea of what our Community is like and get access to some numbers that might help to decide to join us.

Keith Outten
03-25-2018, 4:12 PM
I should probably explain that all of the banner advertisements here except two are local on our server. They are direct sponsors of SawMill Creek. The two Google ads are served from Google's network and they rotate so we never know what banners you might see from those two banners. In the past our income from Google was a fare percentage of our funding but these days its almost non-existent. It really hurt to lose so much of our income from Google.

Our operating costs can't be decreased much other then adjusting our bandwidth, all of our other operating costs are fixed. Eliminating Visitor access will increase the life of our server to a degree but it won't be significant. We still have bookkeeping, banking and a few other services to support and we must have a server administrator because I'm not capable of wearing that hat.

Once again these are just a few more of the things behind the scenes that are different between SawMill Creek and FaceBook.

roger wiegand
03-25-2018, 8:10 PM
Keith, what would the "contributor" fee need to be to support the site? I've thought that the requested $6 per year is absurdly cheap, and wouldn't have particularly blinked had you asked for $6 a month. I've made the seemingly incorrect assumption that you ask for what you need. I'm a member on several sites that ask for $20-30 a year to be exempted from ads, and this seems completely reasonable.

I'd be very concerned that if the site disappeared behind a paywall that new members would quickly dry up and the site soon dwindle. While only a small percentage of "visitors" are even actual people, where would new users come from if the site were hidden? I found it because it frequently came up in search results with sensible answers to things I was looking for. I don't know how I would have found it otherwise.

Chris Parks
03-25-2018, 8:34 PM
I've never met anyone outside of tech who actually understands what a VPN does. I'm not sure how, but people generally seem to think it provides some kind of privacy, and it really doesn't.

I have never understood it did anything else, can you please explain your view on VPN's for this naive user. Thanks.

Jim Becker
03-25-2018, 10:15 PM
I have never understood it did anything else, can you please explain your view on VPN's for this naive user. Thanks.
A VPN can mask your physical location, depending on how it's setup, but it doesn't protect you from yourself...IE, your browser, etc. In the business world, it's generally used to tunnel between, say...a home office and the business network by segregating the traffic through an encrypted stream as it passes from the home through the Internet to the "office". That helps protect confidential business data in that specific stream, but doesn't affect other data if the user in turn accesses the Internet "from" the office network. In the personal world, folks quite often use VPNs to do things like make certain services think they are somewhere else so they can access them. Some content services are limited to certain geographies, for example, so by using a VPN from one's home to some remote location that's within the geography that the content service, um...services...one can gain access. But as Carlos stated, VPNs are not really focused on data privacy. That's still on the individual user.

Curt Harms
03-26-2018, 6:12 AM
I have never understood it did anything else, can you please explain your view on VPN's for this naive user. Thanks.

I use one when connecting via a public access point such as a hotel, restaurant and the like. Data is encrypted by the VPN provider from my machine to the 'other end' of the provider's network. From the provider's server to the target site is up to the browser/destination site AFAIK, i.e. HTTPS or similar. For my purposes VPN is another layer for the ner'do'wells to compromise.

Larry Edgerton
03-26-2018, 11:04 AM
I figure they can only get out what I put in, and not just on facebook. I do not do any financial transactions on the same computer that I play online with, different email address as well. I lie about things like my birthday, and only say things I would not mind the whole world knowing. I just like to see what my kids, grandkids are doing.

Keith Outten
03-26-2018, 11:40 AM
Keith, what would the "contributor" fee need to be to support the site? I've thought that the requested $6 per year is absurdly cheap, and wouldn't have particularly blinked had you asked for $6 a month. I've made the seemingly incorrect assumption that you ask for what you need. I'm a member on several sites that ask for $20-30 a year to be exempted from ads, and this seems completely reasonable.

I'd be very concerned that if the site disappeared behind a paywall that new members would quickly dry up and the site soon dwindle. While only a small percentage of "visitors" are even actual people, where would new users come from if the site were hidden? I found it because it frequently came up in search results with sensible answers to things I was looking for. I don't know how I would have found it otherwise.

Yep, this is a rock and a hard place situation. Without free access people won't be able to check out the waters here and that might slow our new registrations to a crawl. But, its possible that when people who have refused to register cannot access our forums they might register. At the same time I expect the number of discussions might suffer if less people participate. Without a crystal ball there isn't any way to predict what will happen.

Its also impossible to predict a means to provide for our funding. There isn't any solid information available concerning how many will donate and how much. We know the current number of Contributors but that number may go up or down, there's no way to tell. I got a Private Message asking why I don't use a poll to generate data but I don't think we could acquire enough information to ascertain accurate data. For starters the majority here won't answer a poll and if I place the poll in only one forum the majority here won't even see it. Rarely do people view more then one forum here and if I placed a poll in every forum the complaints would be brutal. The announcements at the top of every forum receive very few views, this is just the way it is here.

For the near term we will try eliminating Visitor access first. We will continue to provide free access to registered Members until such time our advertising revenue decreases to the point that we are forced to convert to a subscription based Community. We will continue to ask for 6 dollar per year donations from Contributors as long as we can and continue to accept higher donations from those who are willing. If our Contributors are willing to accept another option I would like to restrict access to the Classifieds Forum to Contributors only. Our Classifieds Forum works and it is worth more than the 6 dollars per year to gain Contributor status here.

Carlos Alvarez
03-26-2018, 1:53 PM
I have never understood it did anything else, can you please explain your view on VPN's for this naive user. Thanks.

Jim covered it well. I'll add my own words...

A VPN is like teleportation. It puts your computer effectively on another network. Corporate networks aren't accessible from outside, other than the VPN servers. You connect to the VPN server, and all of your data rides a "tunnel" to the VPN server, where it exits onto the local network. And we actually do use the word tunnel. So the ONLY thing it does is make it look like you are somewhere else, and eliminate the ability to see the traffic inside the tunnel. But just like a real tunnel, eventually you come out and the data is wide open again. IT IS NEARLY ALWAYS USELESS. The only thing it solves in reality is that your ISP can't see you pirating movies/software. Oh, and if you want to see a program that is area-restricted, like a BBC show, you could appear to be in the local area to watch it. That's it.

It used to be good for public networks like hotels and open wi-fi, before encryption was prevalent. Now I can't think of any service that isn't already encrypted, and adding a VPN does absolutely nothing. I *only* use VPNs to tunnel back to my company networks to reach servers that are not exposed to the world. Because everything else is already encrypted anyway, and if someone has the skills to crack one, cracking both is no challenge.

Jim Becker
03-26-2018, 4:11 PM
VPNs will also reduce performance because of their inherent overhead...I would never use one without a specific purpose, such as a business need, personally.

Carlos Alvarez
03-26-2018, 4:36 PM
VPNs will also reduce performance because of their inherent overhead...I would never use one without a specific purpose, such as a business need, personally.

OHHHH, yeah, forgot to mention this, great point. Not only overhead, but also they HAVE to be rate limited to avoid overload. Every VPN I've tested maxes out FAR below my internet speeds (gigabit at home, 100-200Mbps at various offices). No VPN keeps up with that.

Then you have latency and round trip time. Picture a call where I say, "Jim, read the first paragraph of this book to me." And every few words we have to exchange a back and forth handshake to verify reception, decrypt, etc. "Did you get it? Got it? You ready for the next sentence? Sure." That's how TCP/IP works. This back and forth is mostly around 30ms to 60ms each time, but a VPN normally makes that 2-3x. So anything "chatty" with a lot of exchanges back and forth gets really slow, even if the data speed itself is fast.

EDIT: I'm nearly always connected to a few VPNs for business, but I ONLY send the traffic that needs to go to that location, not all internet traffic. Most consumer VPNs take all traffic, on purpose.

Jim Becker
03-26-2018, 6:39 PM
Yea, split-tunnel can help, but many companies don't permit it...sometimes to the extent that accessing a printer on the home network is impossible!

I was glad that most of the time prior to retirement I could avoid VPN for the majority of work because the tools I was most often using were accessible via SSL SSO since business partners needed access to them, too. I only had to bring up the VPN to get to a few "behind the curtain" type resources from time to time. Voice/video via SIP connected through an SBC and didn't require VPN, either, which was nice because of ringing multiple devices, including mobiles would make VPN terribly painful. The net result wast that my connections were faster than the poor folks who were using VPN. (they were also saddled by Windows, too...whereas I was using BYOD MacOS...but that's a separate religious thing LOL)

Carlos Alvarez
03-26-2018, 6:48 PM
Yea, split-tunnel can help, but many companies don't permit it...sometimes to the extent that accessing a printer on the home network is impossible!


My government clients try to block it. Hah, too bad, I know how to write my own routing tables, they can't stop me. That only works for end users. Which of course, means that the policy did its job. If you can write the routes, you probably won't click stupid crap and get a virus on their network either. It's impossible for me to do my job without split routes, because I have to access our servers with code and such to move it to them. Idiots.

You won't catch me using Windows. That's like the Yugo mechanic also owning a Yugo to try to get to his shop every day to work on all the dead Yugos.

Customer: You're supporting our Windows network but you use only Macs????

Me: Sure, you want someone to use reliable tools to fix your unreliable ones, right?

Dave Zellers
03-26-2018, 7:36 PM
Yep, this is a rock and a hard place situation....

I love this thread! It's TWO *click* TWO threads in one!

I can't comment on the Very Personable Nerds being discussed, but Keith- what about accumulating all the confessions made over the years here and blackma... I mean making those members an offer they can't refuse?

Could be a goldmine! Or would that be wrong? :rolleyes:

Good luck. A very good friend in sales once told me, 'we don't have problems, we have opportunities.' This will work out. Change will happen but it will work out. I think most contributors will support a higher fee. Count me as one.

Carlos Alvarez
03-26-2018, 7:54 PM
It's TWO *click* TWO threads in one!


382408


I like and will use your new definition of VPN.

Dave Zellers
03-26-2018, 8:05 PM
The Count! I raised my 2 kids with The Count!

:)

Dave Zellers
03-26-2018, 8:13 PM
But seriously, there are millions in hush money sitting out there.....

Dave Zellers
03-26-2018, 8:14 PM
Or in here to be more accurate.

I'll need 3% as a finders fee.

Ryan Mooney
03-28-2018, 12:46 PM
The plot thickens to a minor degree. There is now evidence emerging that facebook was also harvesting data off of peoples phones using their app. This included things like contact information, and sms and call records. Its probable (close to certain) that most of that data was sold as well. This was likely within their terms-of-service which probably means it was "legal" but doesn't make it any better.

I've always been a little tinfoil hat about installing apps on my phone (especially if you're paying attention to what permissions they ask for/require to be allowed to run) and this doesn't make me feel any more comfortable with them. You can use facebook on your phone via a browser but they make a lot of things more difficult. The chat interface for instance doesn't work unless you force your browser to pretend to be the desktop version, there is no solid technical reason for this except to encourage people to install the app. While nominally native apps can provide a better user experience, removing the features certainly makes one have to ponder the real reasoning. I see more and more companies pushing their custom apps in order to use their service on mobile, generally if that becomes the hard requirement I just quit using their services (I did install pandora on an old tablet for the shop but it was wiped of personal information first).

More practically it's hard to see how folks without a lot of technical background can manage their way through this, and I fear that the long term effects of the betrayal of trust will do immeasurable harm to the tech industry.

Carlos Alvarez
03-28-2018, 1:13 PM
There is now evidence emerging that facebook was also harvesting data off of peoples phones using their app.

They always did that, and said so. I don't understand this "now" stuff. You install FB and the app security tells you what it will harvest and use.

Jim Becker
03-28-2018, 1:44 PM
The plot thickens to a minor degree. There is now evidence emerging that facebook was also harvesting data off of peoples phones using their app. This included things like contact information, and sms and call records.

That was an opt-in on Android devices, so members using those devices clicked "yes" to allow access to the information and sync their address books. The language may not have been clear, but yes, it was essentially legal. The easy fix is to un-sync contacts which turns off the data gathering.

Facebook is also in process of rolling out more extensive control by a member over their personal data and folks will hopefully take advantage of that to assure that only information they want to be available is available.

Carlos Alvarez
03-28-2018, 2:20 PM
That was an opt-in on Android devices

Also on Windows and iOS. It was opt-in everywhere. But users opt in without bothering to read what they are enabling, then act all offended that the device/app did exactly what it said it was going to.

Ryan Mooney
03-28-2018, 3:36 PM
They always did that, and said so. I don't understand this "now" stuff. You install FB and the app security tells you what it will harvest and use.

I didn't feel that it was as clear that it was harvesting all of your data for sale to third parties as it could have been. That your in-app facebook "friends", etc.. is fair game was always pretty clear.

Jim Becker
03-28-2018, 4:43 PM
Also on Windows and iOS. It was opt-in everywhere. But users opt in without bothering to read what they are enabling, then act all offended that the device/app did exactly what it said it was going to.
True, it was opt-in for all, but I believe that only on Android were they able to scarf the call data, etc. Android is, um...shall we say...not always as secure as folks might like it to be.

Carlos Alvarez
03-28-2018, 4:46 PM
True, it was opt-in for all, but I believe that only on Android were they able to scarf the call data, etc. Android is, um...shall we say...not always as secure as folks might like it to be.

Gotcha, and correct, there was more data available to them on Android. A common complaint about iOS is that it's locked down...which is good for most consumers, not so good for hackers. I have Androids for hacking and playing, iDevices for real work.

I honestly didn't even bother reading any of the articles. The data is stuff I expected them to be using, and has zero consequence to security as far as I saw, so I tuned out.