How To Make Your Profile Private - Tutorial

[MeganB]

Here at Spells8, we take the privacy concerns of our members seriously. We know all too well, and many of us have experienced, what can happen when we are unintentionally pushed out of the broom closet against our wishes. Spells8 is a mostly public platform. Posts made here in the forum, as well as most profiles, are searchable through search engines such as Google and Ecosia. Fortunately, the forum platform has an option to make a public profile private! Today, I am going to walk you through how to do that and what that will look like for someone who stumbles across your profile on the web.

Why Make Your Profile Private

Everyone has their own reasons for wanting their profile to be private. This could be safety concerns such as family and friends stumbling across your spiritual path. You may also want to make your profile private from employers, both current and future, as some people still discriminate against those who are not of a mainstream faith. Whatever the reason, we want to assure you that the choice is 100% yours.

Making Your Profile Private

To make your profile private takes just a few simple steps. It is literally as easy as checking a box and clicking “Save”!

First, navigate to your preferences page. From there, click or tap on the “Interface” option. You will see several options available to you.

The little box you are looking for says this: “Hide my public profile and presence features”. Check the box next to it and then hit “Save Changes”. Once you have done so, your profile will no longer be viewable – this includes viewable to other members (moderators and staff can still see your profile, though!).

Go through these steps and the only visible information will be your name and username.

If you need to change those to make them less conspicuous, we have tutorials for updating that information, too. You can find that linked below!

→ How to Change Your Name and Username on Spells8

For anyone who has safety or security concerns, I hope this helps give you peace of mind when interacting with us here in the coven!

[starborn]

Thank you for sharing this guide, @MeganB! It’s a super useful feature.

[MeganB]

You’re very welcome! I hope it helps those who need it - and it’s a feature that not a lot of people know about!

[BryWisteria]

This is a really helpful guide with an important reminder too! The Coven community is a very warm, friendly, and supportive place, but unfortunately the same can’t be said for the world wide web as a whole.

In the same way that one would use protective spells and talismans, it’s important to use mundane methods to stay safe too. Doing things such as making your profile private and posting more personal or sensitive content over in the Coven-only A Sacred Space are solid steps to take to keep your identity and information more secure

Thank you so much for this, @MeganB!

[MeganB]

@BryWisteria

Thank you so much for this, @MeganB!

You’re welcome, Bry! It’s definitely a good reminder that most of the forum is public. We get so comfortable here in our bubble that we can often forget!

[Artemisia]

Thank you for writing this clear guide! I was searching for some topic a few weeks ago and was surprised to find that if brought up a conversation from Spells8 that I was a part of. There wasn’t anything that I said that I shouldn’t have said in public, but it did make me more cautious realizing that Google will find and index things. Especially since I am a mostly in the closet which.

[MeganB]

You’re welcome - I’m glad to see it was helpful! Google is a sneaky little Search Engine, that’s for sure. I often forget just how much information is available on Google using search. It’s so much!