Keeping commentators’ email addresses private
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I’ve noticed something extremely strange and disturbing with the comment function on my blog (http://dogdragonhare.wordpress.com). Even though the email addresses of those who submit comments are supposed to be private, my blog displays them without my or their permission. Essentially, the blog displays the username AND email address of the latest person to comment on a any post on my blog across every single post on my blog. Since the site explicitly says that email addresses left by the commentators are private, those submitting comments have no idea that their information may be revealed not just to me but to the entire world.
What’s even more absurd and disturbing is that my blog in fact imports private information from people who make comments from another blog that I host. I noticed that someone who left a comment for me on my other blog had his name and email address displayed on this blog, even though his email address was kept private (as it should have been) on the blog where he left the comment.
Could someone please help? This is an extremely annoying and serious problem and conveniently, WordPress Support is “temporarily closed”. I’d really would like to get this issue resolved ASAP. So far, I have unchecked the box in my discussion settings that requires people to leave their name and email addresses in order to protect their privacy but I really shouldn’t have to do that. And I don’t want to keep doing that forever.
Would greatly appreciate any advice or suggestions. Many thanks.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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@TSP
They did provide a link in there post towards the beginning of their thread here is the link
http://dogdragonhare.wordpress.com -
I see you have comment moderation turned on as I tried to leave a comment on your blog.
I set my test blog to the theme you are using, and here is a screen cap and as you can see nowhere is the email address revealed.
If you are talking about in the email field when someone enters their information to leave a comment then let me explain what happens.
When someone comes to your site to leave a comment and enters their information, wordpress sets a cookie in their browser. The reason wordpress does that is so that people will not have to re-enter their information the next time they come to comment on your blog. No one else can see that information because that cookie is not on their computer.
You can test this yourself. Turn comment moderation off temporarily, log out of wordpress and clear your browser cache and cookies and restart your browser. Go to a page on your blog and leave a comment. Navigate away from that page to the main blog page. Now navigate back to that page and you will see your information. Now go back to your blogs main page, clear your browser cache and cookies and then go back to the page you commented on. You will NOT see that information filled in since your computer does not have that identifying cookie. The same is true for anyone going to your blog. They will ONLY see something filled in if they have previously left a comment on your blog. If they have not, or if they have cleared their browser cookies, then the fields will be blank.
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