forum critical privacy issues regarding content: things there was no indication about either

Started January 10, 2018 by @norbinary

tune

I checked my profile on here and saw that one of my universes (which i did not intend to share to just anyone) could be seen, and that it was set to public. you could just go on to my profile, and look at all at the content of it.

I had not set it to public, I had set it so that "anyone with the url" could see it. and that is what i did, and i shared this url with one (1) person, as i did not want anyone else to see it, as it would've been spoilers, and also because i am not yet proud of the content in those pages to show them. that's reasonable.

what's unreasonable, was that for safety measures- i checked via an incognito and un-inlogged state, and was able to look and peruse at all of that content.

that is huge oversight, to say the least.
@andrew (Our Supreme Lord and Overseer) i hope you can fix this, as i bet many other people really did think that when it said "would only be able to seen by people you've shared the url with" in the settings, that it would mean exactly that. it was a very unpleasant surprise.

Hey @norbinary, developer here. Thank you for bringing this to my attention, and I'm very sorry about this misunderstanding. I take privacy very seriously and want to make sure things are completely clear with regard to privacy here on Notebook.ai.

To that end, I've written up an official, detailed breakdown of how the privacy settings work in Notebook.ai. I've also included a link to it in the share dialog that appears any time any page is being shared.

I've also updated the share dialog for universes to be more explicit in describing what exactly is being shared: the whole universe (including its pages). I'm sorry this was unclear before; I don't want this mistake to happen again. This feature was specifically requested at launch to make sharing entire universes easier, without having to go through and individually share each page within the universe. The latter is my recommendation for sharing individual pages within a universe while keeping others private. Private pages will never appear on your profile; only your public pages will.

I've also updated Notebook.ai's sharing feature description (that is shown before users sign up, on each page features are described) to be more clear about the universe-sharing feature, what it entails, and hopefully be more transparent in how sharing works.

However, I want to make sure Notebook.ai works how you'd like it to also, so everyone can customize it however they'd like. Do you mind if I clarify a few things so I can make sure future features are also along the lines of what you're looking to do?

• Are you trying to share a universe's with others, without sharing the pages within that universe?
• Would a universe setting that hides your changes to any pages in that universe from your profile's activity feed (currently, only public pages are shown, but those could be removed as well) be more reasonable?
• Would you prefer to be able to disable the public activity feed on your profile altogether?
• Would you prefer a separate privacy setting that lets people navigate around your pages/universe if they had the URL, but those pages were hidden from your profile?

Thanks, and once again, I apologize for the confusion. We all worldbuild in different ways, which means building a unified product that matches everyone's style is as hard as building one that matches everyone's worlds. We're getting there, and feedback like yours is extremely important for the road there.

hello @andrew (Our Supreme Lord and Overseer) - i am sorry for not responding until now, you sent a good response back but i just did not have the ability to respond - and so also took a huge break from the site. only today, have i really come back. and i do want to use this site as it is hugely useful, and have even wanted to go premium - but i am still unsure whether it would be a good choice - as i looked at the linked privacy page which i am guessing you could have updated since then - and had not.
see, there are several points where the privacy is lacking. I will try to explain what my main grudge was, from way back when, but to take in notice that i have barely used the site since then, and my knowledge and esp of its updates - are more than rough, but here we go:

First of all, i would like for the option to have more than two settings that are "private" and "public". I would like to be able to share parts of my project and also the whole of it, with only a select few people - either through links or invites - and to not be forced to put my project on public, only for those selected people to see. And, for one to be able to have a clear overview of what exactly is private, what is semi-private and shared to some, and what is public.
This was something i did not understand at all, that you had not implemented at least then, cause for me it did not understand that it was public to all, and with it being unclear i just got very shocked and embarrassed to see people had been able to view my big personal, and shoddily edited project. that was a big concern for me, and still is - because i do want to be able to share my work with some, but not for all to be able to see. And if i understand correctly, that still is not implemented?

and yes, the features you suggested would be nice options, and one of them actually describes pretty snugly what i wanted. so again, your response was good, i just have been unable to get back to you - but i am glad to finally be back! i am interested to see what's new with the site, and am also happy to finally respond to you, because it seems like you listen to your community by this reply, at least.

as i use the site more and more, i might be able to have more useful critique and feedback, but for now, i just wanted to get this out of the way already.
have a good day andrew (Our Supreme Lord and Overseer)!