Staying Anonymous and Maintaining Your Privacy in the SANE Forums

[Daisydreamer]

Hi there and welcome to the SANE Forums 🎉

Before you get started, here are a few things you need to know about staying anonymous and maintaining your privacy on the SANE Forums.

You can also find the points about anonymity and privacy outlined below in the SANE Forums Guidelines and FAQs.

Anonymity

The SANE forums are anonymous to allow all of our members to safely share personal experiences without being identified by forum members, members of the public, and the people in your life.

The main way to stay anonymous online is choosing an anonymous username.

Staying Anonymous by picking an anonymous username

Your forums username is how you will be referred to on the forums and is important for maintaining your anonymity. Your username will appear alongside all of your posts. Your posts may appear in search engines- this is why picking a unique username is so vital.

What are the top things to remember when picking a forums username?
Our anonymity guidelines highlight that a username should not contain:

• your name
• your addresses - postal or email
• your member names/usernames on other social media services (this includes any accounts such as Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Tik Tok, or other online communities)
• the name of your workplace, uni or school
• any other information by which you could be identified in real life

What happens if I have already picked a username and it is not anonymous?

If you are already using a username that isn’t anonymous, or you are concerned about your anonymity, you are welcome to contact the SANE team and we can change your username for you.

Send an email to team@saneforums.org and let us know what preferred username you would like to change your account to. Our Community Managers will make the change for you so you can continue on the forums with anonymity.

Be mindful of other’s anonymity too

When sharing your story, be mindful of maintaining the anonymity of those in your life too by never posting real names or contact information.

This way we can maintain anonymity for all people; our Forum members, the people in our members’ lives, and the general public.

Privacy at SANE

SANE takes privacy seriously, and we work within the bounds of our Privacy policy.

There are a few important things to note so you can make an informed decision about posting on the SANE Forums.

We are a public forum

SANE Forums are viewable and searchable by the public. Every year we have of 1.4 million Australians looking for help and seeking support by reading the posts made to the SANE Forums.

As a public site, posts associated with your username may appear in search engine results. This is why picking an anonymous username is so important.

SANE Forum Partners

SANE Australia partners with mental health organisations around the country to make the SANE Forums more accessible to a wider range of people in Australia. We do this by working with partners to host the SANE Forums on their website, making the forums visible to people who may be viewing our partners websites. We call this a syndication.

When members access SANE through one of our partners, they are still on the SANE Forums, managed by the SANE team. The syndication simply means that the SANE Forums are visible on other mental health websites, making it easier for those looking for support to find SANE. Chances are you may have found SANE through one of our partner’s websites.

Can I request for a post or a thread to be deleted?

If you are concerned about a post or thread you have created, you can request it be deleted. For steps on how to do this, check out the Delete a post section of our guidelines

If you have any questions about anonymity or privacy, please feel welcome to reach out to the SANE team at team@saneforums.org. We are always happy to help!

[Mazarita]

Hi @Daisydreamer really appreciate the information given here to members about choosing unique usernames at the SANE forum. Choosing a username that is solely for use at the SANE forum ensures that a member's anonymity is highly unlikely to be compromised.

This way no connections can be made with a member's other public usernames that could be found in Google searches, or in social media.

I hope the information in this post will be featured in a prominent place on the website in the future. Thanks again.

[Daisydreamer]

Hi @Mazarita and thank you for your post 🙂 We will be pinning this discussion to the top of the "welcome and getting started" section of both the Lived Experience and Friends, Family and Carers forum to make sure that it is visible for those visiting the forums for the first time.

If you have any other suggestions on how we can make this discussion more visible on the forums, I would love to hear your thoughts too 🙂 

[Mazarita]

Great news, thanks! 

[aweseom]

I find guided meditations that incorporate acceptance or gratitude really help me on the days that I struggle.

“Gratitude is one of the most powerful human emotions. Once expressed, it changes attitude, brightens outlook, and broadens our perspective.”
― Germany Kent

https://youtu.be/KjN-0lmZ7BQ

Enjoy and thank you for this service

[Former-Member]

Thanks for this post @Daisydreamer. It's also good to keep things friendly and supportive with these forums too. I guess we can debate and lose tempers from time to time, but at least if we try for the majority of the time, to keep things a bit optimistic, this will help people understand the forums as a good and safe place to go to when reaching out for support and companionship.