O/T Online cowards.

[Andy_Faber]

Falling into the category of knowing how to use things...cars, cameras, computers, Smart TV’s etc...but having next to no idea of how they actually work, both MA’s and even Tricky’s comments above leave me feeling very naive.

I had no idea it was so relatively straightforward to trace people and am thankful that I stick to my own rule of never posting anything that I wouldn’t be prepared to say to someone’s face.

If, as MA suggests, it is so relatively easy to track down those that post such offensive and threatening nonsense then surely the time is long overdue for these ‘huge IT companies’ to put public decency before profit. Once football officials and individual players start being got at in the way of Mike Dean, Rudiger and Rashford (amongst others) then the whole integrity of the game is being brought into question.

I completely agree with MA that it would be wrong for those with the capability to ‘out’ anyone from our forum and that such ‘refereeing’ should be left to Andy...but these ‘scum’ do need to be both ‘outed’ and, imo, heavily penalised. If they were writing/saying such stuff in any other more conventional form of media then surely the newspaper/radio station etc would, quite rightly, be held to account. Not sure why these IT companies aren’t treated the same way...the internet is a fine thing, but it has a lot to answer for too, and we are in the midst of dangerous times in many ways.

It’s relatively straightforward to trace those who choose or aren’t aware of how to hide themselves.

As a mere mod I can see y’all’s IP address which is used by me to filter out potential spammers and on two occasions to confirm to the forum that new members WERENT spammers (I believe MA was the first and no MA I didnt reveal any private info it was more of a ‘believe me chaps’ thing) but as Tricky says a VPN is one easy way of overcoming that (I’ve recently relinquished one) as is using pay as you go mobile sims, which by contrast aren’t available in Spain

I have mentioned before that I was a mod on a ‘feisty’ music forum and myself and other mods through the timeline of that have been approached by the poooliss on a number of matters including domestic violence and *****philia, but whilst we were all 100% compliant/helpful IMO things have taken a backward step in the past decade because the social media giants have become so big they can set their own rules