phpBB3 Data Scraping

[Rommel]

I have concerns of Google or something else scraping infromation off of our forums posts. Data like email, links, names, topics, etc.

Can this be prevented to be totally private so no bot can snoop?

The members are sensitive to discussions coming up when someone searches google.
_________________
Douglas B Post

[Patrick]

Hello Rommel,

Welcome aboard.

Most likely if you require login, that should do it. But to be 100% safe, you'd want to have forum contents be visible only to a certain user group.

While you could block Google through robots.txt - robots.txt is only respected by respectable companies. Anyone could still scrape your content if they didn't choose to respect robots.txt.

I hope that this helps.

Thanks,

Patrick
_________________
Patrick O'Keefe - phpBBHacks.com Administrator - Feedback? Questions? Please Contact Me!
User Guidelines - Featured phpBB - Featured Author - phpBBHacks.com Awards - Supported Sites - About Us
Author, Managing Online Forums - A Practical Guide to Community Management
phpBB 3 Tutorials: Add Hacks | Clear Your Cache | Fix Missing Images | phpBB 3 Permissions Guide

[the_nothing]

yeah I had a PM from a very shocked member the other day

she was horrifed to find her posts coming up in google searches

she said to me "I didn't know my messages would come up in google, DELETE ALL MY POSTS AND ACCOUNT IMMEDIATELY"

blimmen heck was she in a strop

[~HG~]

The reality is that if someone is concerned about posts coming up in search engines, they simply should not post anything anywhere on the internet.

This is the only sure way of stopping it happening.
_________________
~HG~

|| rodneyangell.com || || phpbb-tutorials.com ||My Hacks