I have noticed a few DS postings where members are concerned about privacy, confidentiality, and other issues. As one of the administrators of the Positive MS Support Group, I decided to send Doug a letter on behalf of the comments I had seen.
Following is the letter I received back from Doug.

But, my concern also is that we should have a possible voice in future improvements and changes on DS. Thus, if you would like to leave a comment about your concerns, or ideas of features you would like DS to incorporate into the site, I will sum up everything people have said, and send a letter to Doug on behalf of the members.

I'd greatly appreciate if you would share any ideas of improvements, or things that DS could do. Thanks, Leanna

DOUG'S LEttER:
Hi,

Thank you for writing. Although weâ??re doing our best to stop them
immediately, occasionally a spammer will sign up as a member of our
site, and begin messaging members. As soon as we know, we cancel (and
permanently ban) members that are spamming.

They can not get your email from DailyStrength unless you have included
it in one of your own posts. This is, unfortunately, a very common kind
of spam that occurs all over the internet. Thanks to reports from
members like you, weâ??re able to get rid of them quickly.

Also, journals are, by default, available to anyone who visits DS. They
can be hidden, of course, but all content is public on DS. The thing to
remember is that members are supposed to be anonymous; not giving their
real names, phone numbers, etc. will protect them from their DS ID being
tracked back to them personally.

We believe there are pros and cons on both sides of the Google search
argument. YES, we can theoretically block Google from finding user
profiles...but it also prevents people from finding much of the value
that you all are posting to the site. Many, many folks come to DS
because they do a search for a disease or treatment and then find our
wonderful site. On the other hand, we understand that many folks use the
same ID for multiple sites, and you want to do anything you can to keep
your private thoughts, well, more private than we're currently offering.

However, our programmers are hard at work at creating privacy options
and other features that can help address this issue. We'll be glad to
change your username to something less identifiable if that's a big
issue for you, and you can also remove any items of concern (hometown,
etc) from your profile by yourself. Also, you can use our privacy
options on your journal to â??lockâ?? it for either just yourself or your
friends to view. For more guidance on how to use our journal privacy
please see our help pages.

Thanks