New Posting Features - Zoints Anonymous Posting - Improved privacy for members

Have you ever wanted to discuss something on a forum but never posted because you didn't want people to know it was you? To solve this problem, we created an anonymous posting hack.

Via the admin control panel, you can easily choose which forum(s) allows for anonymous posting.




For anonymous enabled forums, your members then get this handly little checkbox (unchecked by default) when making a new thread or post.




If they check the box, then their post is created under the account you setup and assign as the anonymous poster. I personally created an "anonymous" username, but you can create whatever you want.




As forum owners, we all know that a few members will choose to screw around with this feature. Therefore we created an easy means to identify who created an anonymous thread/post should the need arise. Please be ethical and tell your members you can see who posted anonymously should the need arise. You can check the log by going here:




And the log looks something like this:



Official support for this modification will take place at http://network.zoints.com in this forum.


Enjoy, click install, check out Zoints' other hacks, have a great day, and all that happy jive.

[abramelin]

this is not working correct on my 3.6.2 forum. I am making a post and click the "make anony post" the user avatar is the avatar of the anony user ok, the profile goes to it but the most important thing username is my username in showthread.php. i think It is conflicting with EWT Last Reply and Thread Starter Username Highlight mod.

[gavinzac]

Originally Posted by tako

sometimes, discussion in anonymous thread becomes complicated. My idea is give user an option if they show some encrypted id in addition to anonymous id. That way, with identity anonymized, users can identify the same user's post and keep discussing. How about that?

thats ridiculous to be honest. if two anonymous people want to have a conversation they need to
1) use PM
or
2) realise they are on an internet forum, its got built-in anonymity

[magnus]

Another awesome "Zoints" release.

One thing I did notice was that you chose not to include automatic template edits in this release. Any reason?

I've gone ahead and added automatic template editing and re-exported the product. So, if anyone else is like me and prefers to have the plugin do everything for them (and make reverts and the like MUCH easier), here you go. :P

[amnesia623]

Question -
Do 'Zoints' releases need to have Zoints installed to run?

[magnus]

Originally Posted by amnesia623

Question -
Do 'Zoints' releases need to have Zoints installed to run?

Nope.

[amnesia623]

Originally Posted by magnus

Nope.

thanks

[johnstires]

Can someone please confirm that this is completely secure. Other Anon hacks out there display userids in the source, or other roundabout means for members to find out who the anon is. I want to make sure that no other member can find out who the anon poster is.

I like that it is out under the Zoints label, makes me more confident.

[magnus]

Originally Posted by johnstires

Can someone please confirm that this is completely secure. Other Anon hacks out there display userids in the source, or other roundabout means for members to find out who the anon is. I want to make sure that no other member can find out who the anon poster is.

I like that it is out under the Zoints label, makes me more confident.

This changes the userid at the backend level. The only thing I can confidently tell you is that the originator's userid is not visible via a 'view source'. As for the overall security of the plugin, that's in the hands of vBulletin and PHP.

[amnesia623]

The only way to tell if a user is posting as anonymous is that the user is shown in the 'whos online' making a thread.

This isn't good if you want to restrict this feature to one forum (like a rant/rave forum)...is there a way around it?

[amnesia623]

Originally Posted by abramelin

this is not working correct on my 3.6.2 forum. I am making a post and click the "make anony post" the user avatar is the avatar of the anony user ok, the profile goes to it but the most important thing username is my username in showthread.php. i think It is conflicting with EWT Last Reply and Thread Starter Username Highlight mod.

I have the same issue.

I installed this to one forum ans tested it myself. It appeared to work ok until another user posted using this hack and it not only showed their sig, but also their username. (the anonymous avatar appeared though).

I am removing this hack until it's 100% private or I figure out why it's not working correctly.

BTW - I don't think I have either of the two mentioned hacks intalled.

Thanks