Not happy about Mollom.
I have to say that I am not comfortable with the Mollom Policy which it seems all ABC'ers have to agree to before they can post. Too Big Brother for me, therefore I will re-asses my account. Many (behind the scenes) will be delighted, but if this is the way ABC wants to go, then I'm out. It's an horrendous invasion of privacy imo.
How it works – When you post a message on a website that uses our service (called "the website" in the remainder of this text), the website's server will first send your message – as well as some information about your identity (such as your IP address, name or nickname, e-mail address and OpenID) – to our server. Our server will then compare your message and your identity details with all elements in our database, and perform several complex statistical computations in order to assess the quality of your message (e.g., spam, abuse, etc.).
If our server then determines that the content of your message is of insufficient quality or constitutes spam or abuse, it will inform the website thereof. The website server may then decide to reject your message, or to provide you with an additional question to find out whether you are in fact a human being, and not a machine trying to send out as much commercial communications as possible. Also, in case the server is uncertain about the quality of the message, it may forward your message to a human moderator who will assess the quality of your message and act accordingly. Please note that it is sometimes possible that our server or moderators wrongfully determine the actual quality of the content of your message, or wrongfully consider your message as spam or abuse.
What we store about you – We store all information provided to us by the website. This will include, in particular, the following personal data about you (to the extent effectively provided to us by the website): the content of your message, your name or nickname, IP address, user ID, OpenID, e-mail address, URL of your website, and the date and time you post a message.
How long we store this data – Your data is stored in our databases for at most two months. After this period of two months, we can continue to store your data in anonymized way for a period of two years.
How we use your personal data – We use your personal data to assess the quality of your message, and to find out whether your message constitutes spam, by comparing your data with all other data of all other users in our databases. Afterwards, As we also use your personal data to make similar assessments for all other websites that use our service, as the more information we store in our database, the better we can assess whether a message is genuine.
While we sometimes provide statistical information (trends, numbers, etc.) generated from our databases to third parties, please rest assured that you cannot be identified on the basis of this statistical information.
I also note that you cannot copy and paste text (do it through Notepad). Tony, this is not the way to go, what happened to your 'everything unmoderated' policy? Okay, I know that doesn't work, but this is a step too far in the other direction. (also can't remove italics from last para)
Oh, and got this error: -->
Error
I have been a ABC member from the early 2000's until the mid 2000's or maybe earlier, yet when I tried to log on again this morning, using my original password and username (nickname on screen), the website refused to accept them and asked me to change my password. That is strange, as I am still the same person and the same website user.