Question Do the staff here know users' real names?

[Deleted User]

Sometimes when someone isn't paying attention they might accidentally enter their credentials for another site when logging in here. Their email on this site might be [email protected] but they might accidentally enter the email [email protected] then when they receive a login error they try again with their GBAtemp login credentials. This means that the user's email address containing his real name remains in the site's log files forever.

I don't know who has access to the all-knowing log files but I hope it's a limited number of the staff. I'm paranoid enough to use Protonmail and Tor but if I lose focus I might accidentally dox myself.

 

[DarkFlare69]

I doubt those logs are even stored anywhere. Even if they are, nobody cares enough about you to use that maliciously, especially staff.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

We have over 400,000 members registered to this site, nobody in their right mind is going to go and read every single email address for every user and single some out. That's peak paranoia there, you should probably talk to someone about that. Might as well just never go outside on the off chance some random guy will spot your name on your drivers license.

As to who has access, only staff with access to the admin panel can see your email address (AFAIK), which includes Supervisors and Admins. As these positions are very high up on the staff chain and require years of "service" to the site, anyone there who would have access wouldn't use your information for any kind of malicious purpose in the first place, nor would they go looking for it anyways unless someone needed help with it.

 

[Deleted User]

As to who has access, only staff with access to the admin panel can see your email address (AFAIK), which includes Supervisors and Admins. As these positions are very high up on the staff chain and require years of "service" to the site, anyone there who would have access wouldn't use your information for any kind of malicious purpose in the first place, nor would they go looking for it anyways unless someone needed help with it.

What about senior editors? I thought they have the same powers as supervisors.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

Yes, but they're generally asked not to use the admin panel at all because that's not their purpose on the site. They may occasionally help someone who needs it when other admins aren't online, but otherwise the same applies to them that applies to anyone else with access to the admin panel, they're very trustworthy users who wouldn't go about fucking around with someone's information.

 

[Lostbhoy]

What the fuck is an admin going to do with your name anyway? I've got your bank details.... Worry about that! kidding ofcourse... Just incase your mad paranoia goes through the roof!

 

[The Real Jdbye]

They know mine, I doubt they know most other people's.

 

[SG854]

What the fuck is an admin going to do with your name anyway? I've got your bank details.... Worry about that! kidding ofcourse... Just incase your mad paranoia goes through the roof!

When they become famous all of their sins on this site will come back to haunt them mark my words.

 

[FAST6191]

From my time in the online identity thread then
a) quite a few people use their username as their email address (try @ gmail @ hotmail @ yahoo @ various ISPs and all the various others that those made over the years and you will probably find it)
b) email is nice to have but usually far from essential in finding out someone's name. They will tend to leak it in other ways (attribution on google drive or something, documents linked up to help with homework, their websites listing whois data, linking their facebook accounts, their twitter accounts, their linkedin accounts...)

 

[Chary]

As for accidental logins, I have absolutely no idea where that'd be, or if that's even stored. That's hardcore underground bunker tier fear lol.

If you do have your actual name saved to your account or something, like in your registered email that you normally use for the site's login, then yeah, it's somewhere, but who in their right mind is going to sift through the admin panel to find it?

Honestly, your real name won't get anyone far, unless your parents were super unique lol.

 

[FAST6191]

Honestly, your real name won't get anyone far, unless your parents were super unique lol.

If you used that in the first place then chances are you probably already give some indication of your location (and if not your chosen word choice, times when you are online -- I know we are all supposed to be up all night and sleep all day but really it is still going to have most downtime at night), your age and a few other things that can rather narrow things down to feed into the really fun stuff.

 

[JuanMena]

I'm using my real name.
Am I winning?

 

[Deleted User]

Yes when I signed up they made me show my drivers license, social security card, and even made me take a urine sample.

 

[slimbizzy]

I'm using my real name.
Am I winning?

probably maybe

Yes when I signed up they made me show my drivers license, social security card, and even made me take a urine sample.

damn you got lucky. i had to have a prostate exam...

 

[MohammedQ8]

Yes and they know where you live too. Lock your doors.

 

[FAST6191]

Yes and they know where you live too. Lock your doors.

Not going to do any good. We have pictures of the keys (shouldn't leave them in front of the webcam) and thus can make a version of it.

 

[ShadowOne333]

Let the doxxing begin!

 

[Deleted User]

So if it's so hard to find out members' real names then how do you do it when you need to contact a parent over a misbehaving child?

Costello has had to contact peoples parents at least twice to my knowledge when they were performing malicious acts (using botnets/ attempting hacks) so he could warn the parents that their kid has to stop or he will take further action. On a couple of occasions parents have been contacted on facebook by other staff when their 12 year olds have been idiots and have been creating alts and spamming the site with porn etc.

 

[The Catboy]

I am not sure if the staff could get our legal names without telling them, but I am not part of the staff. I do know most of the staff actually know my legal name since they have me on Facebook

 

[Seriel]

So if it's so hard to find out members' real names then how do you do it when you need to contact a parent over a misbehaving child?

Considering later on in that quoted post refers to Facebook, if they've linked their Facebook account then I suppose that's a fairly easy way to contact their parents. You can also sometimes put an email into Facebook search and get hits, if the user hasn't disabled that feature.

Failing that, IP addresses are usually a good start. Under normal (no VPN, as expected from a random 12 year old) circumstances that can get it down to a location and ISP, at which point you could theoretically contact the ISP and politely tell them someone at that IP is being a nuisance on your web space.

But really, lets be honest here. What are you going to do that would cause any member of the websites staff to go to even these mild lengths, nevermind looking in server log files that may or may not exist.
And if they do exist and you do commit a crime worthy of checking, it's highly unlikely the information contained within will tie to your session in any meaningful way. It's not like they can just spy on every single tiny action in order, logs are only of specific actions and presented in the specific way to suit their purpose (Usually shutting down spambots)