One stray click

The other night I was searching the web for places to go while enfemme when I'm off on my holiday. I found a support group not far away which meets once a month but unfortunately their meeting is a week before I arrive. So I thought I'd email the organiser and see if she could recommend and Trans friendly venues in the area.

Email typed and sent from my femme account. I then had an automated reply saying the email address wasn't valid any longer, please use this account which was a hyperlink. Clicked on it, re-typed and clicked send.

A second later I realised that I'd used my default email account that gives my full drab name. Now okay I know as I'm contacting someone in our community that shouldn't be an issue but all the same I couldn't help feeling a little uneasy. Anyway I got another auto reply saying the second account wasn't valid so not sent.

It was a reminder to me that you always need to be careful, if like me you're in the closet. What we put out onto the internet, the WWW is in most cases once sent, out there and it can't be stopped. So note to self; Must pay more attention.

Helen,

Another one of the problems of DADT , having to use multiple accounts , to hide our tracks . I sometimes forget which account I've handed out and find a CDing friend has been ignored for a week .

You also have to careful with Ebay accounts , they have a nasty habit of tracking other accounts and using the wrong one . Some will say that's not possible , well I beg to differ !!

On a slightly different note my computers browsing history always shows up any visits to this form, easily deleted but sometimes you do miss something. Once my son was using my computer, searching for something and typed in WWW, up popped a list of websites, including this one. He said nothing so I'm not sure he even noticed, but...........

Helen, It doesn't matter how experienced you are slip ups are so easy.

Yes, slips like that are easy. We must be really careful. A while ago I signed email at work as Karmen and sent it to our client. I was writing messages as Karmen before that and without thinking signed work email also as Karmen. When I clicked "send", I noticed a mistake, but it was to late. Person on the other side was polite and didn't say anything and I didn't ask, but I'm sure he noticed that, because I received his reply without my original text at the bottom of email, what was unusual. Luckily I sent email to a single person, not a group. If I would send it to a group, especially inside our company, questions would certainly appear. Since than, I'm very careful and also use different computer account for anything related to cross dressing, so I must switch accounts and that makes me more aware too.

I was trying to start up a support group in the Amarillo, Texas area a
few years ago . I was sending out e- mails to a group of interested
people . I accidentally typed the first letter of a friends. name.
Auto fill added him to my mailing list , I then e- smiled
all inviting them to join the group .
He emailed me back the next day saying he was not interested !

JAS

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Originally Posted by DIANEF

On a slightly different note my computers browsing history always shows up any visits to this form,

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I use a second browser to prowl this forum and I've set up that browser to not keep any history. And as soon as I shut down the browser it automatically clears cookies as well so I am no longer logged into the site. I only stay logged in for as long as the browser stays open. That said nobody accesses my personal User ID on our computers. We all have our own.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Beverley Sims

Helen, It doesn't matter how experienced you are slip ups are so easy.

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So very true. And the greater the number of interactions you have the greater the likelihood a slip up will eventually occur.

I also use a totally separate browser, chrome for normal use, firefox for things I'd like to keep a little more private. To help eliminate "cross-contamination", I have totally separate Youtube and Gmail accounts as well. That way, Youtube isnt tracking my watch history and sharing that info with my usual account. Would be horrible to try to show a co-worker that awesome viral video you saw on your phone and "Crossdresser in Public" pops up in your recommended videos.

On Chrome you can go incognito ( ctrl,shift,n) and it won't show on history or as a fill in recommendation.

Yeah, incognito or delete history. I never do either. I mostly think its funny to see ads for stuff I'll never buy reappear here and again. Like the sit-ski think I clicked on in 2015. It is funny though, banner ads will respond to your browser history and give you ads for stuff that you've been looking at. I love seeing ads for women's clothes showing up. The browser does not discriminate!

I am the same run 2 different browsers chrome and firefox. Run firefox and the private window for here, ebay and gmail account.
and it only takes a milasecond for a screwup to happen hate it when that happens.

good luck with all your computer endeavors lol

Leann

When I was first exploring the internet to make contact with others in the CD community I used my home computer and thought I had things buttoned down fairly well. Evidently my teenage son found out about my interests and never said a thing to me until I was ready to come out just a couple of years ago.

Now I only use my laptop and no one else is allowed to use it. I use multiple browsers to reduce cross contamination and try my best to keep from spilling the beans to people I'm not ready to share with. But it can still happen. A good friend in my support group lives in a small community and is fairly well connected both in civic and church circles. She accidentally sent a facebook message to someone to buy a yard sale item but sent it from her female account. Within a week she had come out to all her family and many of the people in her community. It was fairly traumatic but it was helped by the fact that her wife was a rock solid supporter through the experience. It could have ended the marriage if they had not been communicating and sharing this over the years.

On of my friends has fully transitioned and is prominent in the LGBTQ+ community now. She is my friend both on my Sarah and on my Dave facebook accounts and I have to go through the friend suggestions offered on both accounts on a weekly basis to make sure I haven't caused myself problems. Every now and then I see a name or face pop up and have to delete it so the algorithms in that part of Facebook don't suddenly share my girl side with the folks who have no need or right to know.

So yeah, we need to be aware of what we do here in the totally connected world.

Scary stuff! I try to be everso careful too but one thing I am sure about is that I'll do my best to keep FB out of the equation as it's far too unpredictable.

I use Firefox with multiple email and gmail accounts. The history is always erased upon closing out. I'm in a DADT marriage. Maybe she knows I come to this site. If she does she probably does not care. After thirty years of DADT she knows I'm not stopping. What may be of concern to others is the tracking of the browsing history while the session is open. Things I may have viewed will continually show in the advertising column. If I looked at Macy's Vanity Fair offerings for panties or JC Penny for dresses or eBay I'll get reminders. Those computers will correlate my browsing history at JCPenny and send me an email reminder asking if I'm still interested in that dress. I suppose for someone totally in the closet and hiding from a spouse, it may become a constant issue of nerves.

If you use a computer at an employer you better be aware there is no privacy. You may have permission to access sites, but, that does not confer privacy. I've read on this site members being blocked at public libraries for one reason or another. That can easily happen with an employer. I know the employer I worked for would review a browsing history if a site cropped up as blocked. Looking at porn would have gotten me fired. Looking at this site maybe would have gotten a smirk or smile.

I will speak for myself being computer and new technology aliterate. Last month I watched a video here and it ended up on my google drive and for the life of me I can't and still can't remove it. But because I share my drive with most of my family I thought it was on everyone else's drive, but it wasn't. The crazy part of it was while I was trying to remove it all the information on the video had all the information about him. His full name and his male email accounts and now I'm wondering because I downloaded this video if he has any of my information.
The problem is, it's hard to ask for help on something you want to keep secret.
Last weekend I was on this site and my daughter needed a drive to work, knowing I wasn't going to be long I signed out and shut down the site but I didn't clear my history on Google. Well I get home open my IPad and there's a shopping mall hours page open, I was so upset and when I went to the search page and wanted to seach, there was the shopping mall search and below it was CROSSDRESSER. COM. So who ever searched for the mall automatically seen the Crossdressing seach. I asked my wife and she didn't touch it, what upset me the most is everyone in my house have a device or two of there own but mine is the universal one.
We have to be on guard constantly, we can't slip, we have to be on our defence at all times. I guess it comes with the territory..

Different accounts, different browsers, all history and cookies deleted upon closing browser, devices password locked ... the list goes on, but that still can't save you from the far too common problem of IAK (Idiot At Keyboard) human interface. Take an extra minute and make ABSOLUTELY sure nothing is left to find, ladies.

Mmmm, from a couple of the replies it seems as if a computer skills help sticky might not be a bad thing.

Re browsing history on FireFox; try this link https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb...istory-firefox

For Chrome; If you don’t want Chrome to save your browsing history at all, you can browse in private with Incognito mode.

I did once inadvertently use my femme account to sent an email to a friend but I explained it away as being one of several I have that I use when dealing with folks/web retailers as a way of avoiding the chance of identity theft. Think I got away with that one.

Being sure about browsing history is one thing, but to all of you with ads popping up and with search histories showing up, clearing the history isnt always going to help, but I have a couple of solutions.

For ads, install Ad-Block Pro. It's available for both Firefox and Chrome and it's free. Takes seconds to download and install and eliminates all those pesky ads, even on Youtube.

For search engines and the "unexplained" searches showing up on other devices, that is tied to your Google account, not the device itself. I can search for something at work on my main Google account, then on the ride home look at my phone and find that same search, then later in the evening find that search yet again on my home PC. 3 different devices, none of them can talk to each other, but they all know what I searched for. The solution? A whole different Google account for private searches. Using two different browsers with those two different accounts is the best way to avoid unwanted things popping up. My Chrome browser has no idea bootlover1978 even exists, and Firefox has no idea what my real name is or my real email address is. If there is ever any doubt, do a full uninstall of the browser and re-install making sure NOT to check off any boxes that say "Import". Do not import bookmarks, favorites, user names, NOTHING. Once it is clean, there will be no way for one to talk to another.

Lastly, rather than just letting the browser clear itself out, try out CCleaner from Piriform. It's a free program that will clear out your temp files, your cookies, and any stored histories for EVERY browser installed on the computer. It also goes through a lot of different Windows system files, which is something the browsers wont do on their own.

CCleaner is good - I have that, and it does as advertised.

I use Firefox for my CD browsing and anything related to it. I have a separate general use browser for aol that I never use for my CD browsing, but I have to use Google to sign onto aol and Firefox. But, there is some sort of a connection between the two, as I daily look at Zuilie on Firefox and their dress ads DO come up on my aol pages!! How can I stop those ads from being shown on my aol? Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!

I'm not sure if this is correct but it could be one explanation why you get the same ads on different browsers. Every device that connects to the internet has a thing called a MAC address. They're unique to each and every machine/device. So if an advertiser captures your mac address, each time it appears on the WWW they can target it. Also if you use Google on both then that to will marry the two together.

The ads that appear usually have a little symbol top right. It's possible to click on this and then deselect which ad providers you don't want. However what I've found is after a while they reappear as they're all linked through numerous web sites.

Jenny/Helen, the common denominator there is Google, not the MAC address. Google has a full system dedicated to curating specific ads to specific users. Jenny, your best bet to stop the ads on aol is to make a whole new Google account just for CD browsing. Only log into that account in Firefox and never on aol and that should eventually stop the CD ads on your "vanilla" account. It might take a while, but they will eventually go away. Best part is Google accounts are free and easy to setup. I legitimately have 4 Google accounts in total. Only one is used for naughty stuff, the other 3 are either business related or my personal account. Again, my copy of Firefox here never sees my personal account and has no idea it even exists. My CD browsing on Youtube here has 0 connection with my Youtube browsing on my personal account, so my recommended videos in Firefox are radically different than those recommended in Chrome.

Helen, the purpose of a MAC address is to identify a device on an ethernet based network, aka a LAN or Local Area Network. To get out on the web, you need to go through another device (typically your modem) and connect via IP, or Internet Protocol, which uses a different address, your IP address to be specific. If you were to connect to a remote server with your laptop, then connect again with your smartphone using your wi-fi connection, that server would see the same IP address being broadcast to it. Further research has just told me that it is entirely possible for more than one device to have the same MAC address, the only caveat is those two devices can not be on the same LAN.

Source: My Bachelors degree in Information Technology