What's the maximum level of privacy a user can get within the site?

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In a discussion titled ‘What’s the maximum level of privacy a user can get within the site?’, merefield explores how to isolate a subset of users within a private category while keeping the broader forum public. They propose disabling the User Directory, hiding user cards from anonymous users, and keeping the group private — but question whether users can still be identified by username if someone guesses it, especially if they don’t post publicly. JammyDodger finds the topic interesting and asks how far merefield got with their setup. merefield replies that no further progress was made, noting that Discourse essentially offers only two privacy modes — fully open or fully closed — and while individual users can hide their profiles, there’s no way to selectively restrict profile visibility by user. The goal remains to maximize privacy for a sensitive user group without sacrificing the broader forum’s utility or domain name.

1

Continuing the discussion from Is it possible to hide the user listing page:

I’ve got a bunch of users who may want to remain within a private subset of the entire user population.

They will have exclusive access to a private Category.

If I:

  • disable the User Directory
  • disable user cards for anonymous users
  • keep the group private

… I presume all members will still be able to view these users details if they happen to work out one of their usernames? (Let’s assume none of them post in the ‘public’ area of the forum)

What additional steps, if any, can I take this to lock this down to the max so these users are kept as private as possible and isolate them from the general user population?

(and yes I have thought about keeping a private site just for this set of users, but the downside is I want to leverage the facilities of the forum for a wider audience … and what a waste of a rather tasty domain name that would be! :)).

3

This is an interesting one. :slightly_smiling_face: How far did you manage to get with it in the end?

4

No further.

Afaia, Discourse has basically two modes of user privacy, full closed or open wrt user profile routes. Users might choose to hide their profiles individually but cannot discriminate by user?