Gravatar Profile Private — Not private everywhere

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  guaiava · Member · Mar 25, 2015 at 7:23 am

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  Hello,

  I’ve noticed that when setting my Gravatar to private, it does disable the link to the Gravatar Profile when a comment in left, however, when an article is Liked, the square (Gravatar) next to the Liked section still links to the Gravatar Profile.

  For the sake of consistency, it would be great if the Gravatar in the Liked section would be disabled as well (just like it’s the case in the Comment section).

  See example: https://floatingferriswheel.wordpress.com/2015/03/25/testing/

  Cheers.

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  rachelmcr · Member · Mar 26, 2015 at 11:29 am

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  Thanks for that feedback! I’ll pass that along to our team so they can consider updating how Gravatars work for Likes when the Gravatar profile is set to private. :)

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  rachelmcr · Member · Mar 26, 2015 at 11:52 am

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  Hi there,

  I checked with my team, and hiding your Gravatar profile will only disable the link to your profile itself. Your Gravatar will continue to work unless you remove it from the Manage My Gravatars page. You can click the “Don’t use this image” link under your email address(es) on that page to remove the Gravatar image itself.

  There aren’t any plans to change how that works at this time. Please let me know if you have any other questions or concerns about that!

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  guaiava · Member · Mar 26, 2015 at 5:12 pm

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  Thanks for the reply!

  hiding your Gravatar profile will only disable the link to your profile itself

  Right, the link from the generated Identicon is disabled when I leave a comment, but not when I Like the article. The generated Identicon next to the Liked button still links to the Gravatar profile.

  Also, I believe that I’ve already removed my Gravatar since I don’t see the “Don’t use this image” link. I mean hiding my Gravatar and removing it is the same, no?

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  rachelmcr · Member · Mar 26, 2015 at 6:00 pm

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  Sorry, I didn’t explain that very well — the actual link to your profile will still be there, but if someone clicks through your profile is disabled. Anyone who visits that link will see a message like this:

  We’re sorry, that profile has been deleted.

  And yes, you have removed your Gravatar image already. :)

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  guaiava · Member · Mar 27, 2015 at 1:41 am

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  Ok, it makes sense now :)

  In that case, here are some comments to pass on, this is deceptive UX because:
  1) I set my profile thinking it’s private, and it’s not. If that’s not the case, then at least, it could be made clear in the Gravatar Profile page (and support doc) to make expectations clear from the get go, and avoid bad surprises.
  2) it can be considered a security/privacy issue, and to quote an article which raised this point, “usually half the battle for a hacker is knowing one’s login name/username… some have wisely hidden their usernames behind a different Display name.” (the article isn’t directly about Gravatar per se, but the comment still also applies here)
  3) because of 1) & 2), it will inherently affect how privacy-minded users use the Like or not.

  Thanks for listening!

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  rachelmcr · Member · Mar 27, 2015 at 10:27 am

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  Thanks for the feedback! I’ll pass it on to our team.