Serious Security Concern Addressed

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Serious Security Concern Addressed 

Recent communications on this site that many people are concerned that Gravatar is, for want of a better phrase, stealing their identities. In case you missed it then take a look at this thread: https://www.fifteensquared.net/2025/03/15/to-av-or-to-av-not/.

I would ask everyone to consider the following and if your concerns aren’t met then feel free to abandon the site altogether but keep in mind there is no need to announce your intentions one way or another.

Everyone who has ever posted a comment on this site will have seen the following screen snippet:

Clicking Learn how your comment data is processed takes you to Akismet’s privacy page. On that page, you will see that Akismet is part of Automattic – the same company that brings you Gravatar, which Fifteensquared uses to source avatars.

Useful links:
WordPress
Akismet
Automattic
Gravatar

19 comments on “Serious Security Concern Addressed”

  1. Thank you, Ken. I’ve read the Askimet and WordPress stuff. I’m not tech savvy, but I think the horse has bolted. That’s the risk any one of us takes these days..
    I did read that we could opt out of long term data collection, but I couldn’t find a link to that. Or maybe that was for the host, rather than the users?
    Appreciate that you’ve put this up for our consideration.

  2. “[Before commenting on this post, please take a moment to read Serious Security Concern]”

    @Admin Is this link pointing at the right thing? It just seems to be a link to this page.

  3. @2

    Yes. The message will appear in all posts for a while. Unfortunately, “all posts” include this one.

    You never know, though, it might be entertaining like those “how to keep an idiot amused for hours … PTO” tricks we played as kids.

  5. If this is such a serious security concern then I suggest that in the interests of everyone’s security you should acknowledge that including avatars was a mistake and they should be discontinued forthwith!

  6. @5

    The point I’m trying to make is that everyone who has ever commented here has, by extension, already agreed to Gravatar’s terms and conditions.

  7. KenMac , sorry if this annoys you , this is well out of my field . Are you just saying that the security risk is the same as it always was , nothing new ? A one word answer will suffice .

  9. allan_c@5: The title of this thread is rather misleading and I would say unfortunate. It seems to suggest that there is a serious security concern when this is in fact not at all the case.

  12. So the horse has indeed bolted: anyone who has ever entered their email address here to make a comment has already had their details made known to gravatar, even if they leave now and never post again, and all that the furore over avatars has done is to make it clear that this is so.

    In that case, I might as well stay.

  16. As I understand it kenmac has not imposed anything on us. Fifteensquared.net is built using the WordPress web site creation engine. WordPress has always implemented an avatar icon for users, which it shows in comments, admin pages, user profiles etc. If a user (or the administrator) does nothing to change their avatar then it uses the boring grey ‘Mystery person’ icon. As fifteensquared is a WordPress site that’s what we have had and become used to.

    All that’s happened is that the feature in WordPress that shows a user’s Gravatar image (if they have one ) has now been enabled. The many folks here who, like me, have no interest in having a Gravatar image are unaffected and will continue to have our bland grey default icon. Fifteensquared always had our email addresses from when we registered, and that has not changed.

  18. Can I just say (perhaps on behalf of a silent majority, but I don’t know):
    – Thank you for maintaining the site
    – Thank you for sorting all the blogs (allowing me to engage in a little post-Inquisitor banter every week)
    – I really couldn’t care less about Avatars or Gravatar or whatever and trust that you’re doing the right thing

Comments are closed.