PAD files and privacy.
Community Forums/General Help/PAD files and privacy.
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| Those of you who use PAD files, do you list your real address in the file? I've seen shareware download sites which actually display the address they find in the PAD file for all to see. |
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| leave it blank. |
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| I use: none@... some pad-spiders might reject it if blank. |
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| What is a PAD file? |
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| It's kind of like a standardized information file used by many of the websites that accept shareware/demo/freeware software submissions. you can create a PAD file with standard fields that contain your program name, version, contact information, website, price, license, etc. and submit it to a bunch of websites. They can then parse out the information they want from the PAD file and add it to their system. (That way you won't need to fill in the same information a million times in slightly different ways for each site you submit it to) |
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| ...what he said. Structurally, its just a specifically formatted XML file. |
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| I forgot I posted this question. D4NM4N, do you put that on every line where you don't want to provide info? I would think the spiders would notice it's an email address and not a street address. |
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| for email adresses i mean. |
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| I see, in my OP I was referring to the street address. |
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| Well my street address is my very old office address, no need to update it, or just state not given or a fake one. but i am more worried about spam so for all email fields i just put a fake but informative one. You could put in a totally fake info if you wanted to. |
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| You could put in a totally fake info if you wanted to. I'd think that would work against you, since quite a few people wouldn't trust your program if the submission info is obviously fake... |
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| That's my concern. I'll be distributing a freeware game as a traffic lure to my affiliate site so I don't want to look shady, but I have the obvious privacy concerns with my home address. A couple of years ago I was shocked to see my friends home address posted on a shareware download site as the "publishers" address. You'd think a shareware site would understand that most shareware is written by lone-wolf programmers working out of their homes. |
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| I'd think that would work against you, since quite a few people wouldn't trust your program if the submission info is obviously fake... Im not talking about "Mickey mouse, disneyland, florida", i am talking about using an old address, or much better and probably more professional, using something like "For contact info please see company website" with just the country field filled in. I refuse to give out any personal information to automatic inforation dispersal services (or free services like hotmail etc) that is completely irrelevant or is none of their business. If people want to contact me then they can do it through my site. As i said its mainly my email address i do not put on there. My address is an old office i used to use (only wrong because i havent bothered to update it, which is another reason i dont like giving out too much info, things can change.) Not worked against me so far. |
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| Having an old address sounds like a really bad idea as well, since you're just pretending to be reachable that way when you really aren't... At best you're passing your junkmail on to someone else. |
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| which is why i said or much better and probably more professional, using something like "For contact info please see company website" with just the country field filled in Regardless I never got any physical junk mail and i have been using PADs for years. However i got lots of spam which is why i took the email address away and made it "harder" for bots to read off my site. (I highly reccommend people do the same, especially for email) What you have to think about is who is going to contact you through a pad? On shareware sites there is always a link to publisher and a download link also to your own site. If anyone wants to contact a company (customers) then they will use the company website. Especially if the address stated on the 3rd party site says "Please see website for contact". Personally i dont see what the big deal is. |
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