Technical Help Forum

Not sure, but I sincerely hope that you aren't considering this course of action ... your pages are too special!

There are indeed security checks to make sure that a valid account is not incorrectly deleted.

Cathy thats so sweet thankyou :) - but G i am really concerned that a longtime vt friend of mine Travolta159 with great pages for Fes and very welcoming to Vt.friends who visit there, wrote to me yesterday that on returning from a month away in France for the first time out of Morocco he found he had been deleted!! He tells me he was online with vt in France and then when got back he was no more. He says he wrote and asked what happened and says he was advised that he had requested to be deleted. So hes sad about that and im really unhappy about it because i already know vters who have been deleted too trivially for varying opinions of what is 'advertising'. He is wondering if hes been hacked or did something while in France online to click on something to self delete but he says.he knows it takes a letter to vt to authorise that, but i used to suggest quite often vters look him up if they were visiting Fes and also if he could arrange transport for them...and ive seen some vt police members responses that i could imagine they may decide that that is self promotion and advertising...though it is see 'real Morocco' from grass roots level promotion and vter promotion in my thinking. Anyway im just very disappointed for him, just as I would hate my pages and membership to be seen as trivial enough to delete in one click. Thanks

It would be highly unlikely that an account is 'hacked' The only things I've seen is when two people share a computer like boyfriend and girlfriend who share an account and then they break up. The deletion process is secure. But if a person sends a request from their verified email, with correct password, then we will remove the account. As for someone who is self promoting...that simply isn't allowed on VT. We are fairly stringent about this. If a person uses their account to tout their services and to create business for themselves, we will remove them. The alternative is to allow every tout, guide, driver and travel provider to be on the site. It's NO problem for you to suggest a resource that you found very helpful and can vouch for (so long as you're not biased, or involved in the business) But a guide or driver can't have their own account and use it to self promote.

Thanks G, i really dont think hes been advertising. Ive not seen anything of it from him. I have a number of times suggested people to look him up and if he is still a taxi driver might be able to arrange driving them..but thats me suggesting for both the vter or traveller being given a contact that should be reliable plus a vter, and for him i know if hes available he likes to meet vters and good or interesting people. I dont know but if i was me who say recommended in forum post to look him up and he does arrange a vehicle for them then worst case scenario they make his connection with vt to be for business, but its not. so therefore it would be best i dont liase or recommend vter meetups? We have probably only been in communication once or twice every 3 or 4 months but from my experience one of the best ways to visit Morocco is to have connections...so its reality rather than a business thing.or a combination

Sure I understand....we've messaged about this and I think we're on the same page. If you don't mind, I'm going to re-post my message minus any personal parts just so I don't have to re-write out thinking on this: "It's a shame if we lose anyone who would be a good member anytime. We have to balance this with the steady flood of people every day who sign up to tout, advertise, self promote, or otherwise seek to use VT as a captive audience for their recruiting efforts. Trust me...it's a giant amount every day and it's a full time job for someone to do nothing but deal with this. We take great care in not removing people who are new and maybe are not sure of the rules. Typically it's pretty clear whether someone is really here for the travel camaraderie and exploration or if they're just trying to push their own thing forward. If someone seems promising but has promotional link say in their posting signature, we writeto them and ask them to not self promote and bring them up to speed on our guidelines. (sometimes they stick around an get mad at us. There's a member I could mention) In almost every single case, this merely alerts them and they try to be a little more stealthy about it. Still we make an effort. if you feel someone great and with great non promotional potential has been incorrectly removed, please let me know. However, please know that we try to be as unbiased and uniform as we can. I even removed a tips from my fiance' when I first met her because she wrote a review of her family's coffee shop without knowing the rules. In any case, the ultimate goal is for VT to be a different place that others where self promotion and stealth touting rule the day. We really have to protect the special nature of this place."

Gone, but not forgotton: web.archive.org/web/20080912... PJ

Hi and thanks PJ, will look at this link when pick up netbook this afternoon and get full site functions again. But Fouad/Travolta159 is sending another letter to VT today..says he definitely was advised he had made the request to be deleted, he doesnt know how it happened other than that but is missing his vt.friends and is going to ask for his member name back...everything gets deleted when its deleted :(

Well, some is saved at the Wayback machine (the link I gave). PJ

He can write to me directly...what a deleted member says and what is actually the case is often very different. I'm not making any judgements...just not jumping to any conclusions... :)

have tried to get to that link PJ but just get brought back by google to this post....

Hi. I had no trouble getting to the link and everything is there except the photos. He may have to put them back in, but the writing is all there. I hope he can get reinstated. Good luck.

when I returned, I carried on as before - same user name; same password. no pictures remained, but I never had that many here anyway, and I had to reconstitute my HP, which would have needed revision, even if I hadn't resigned in the first place

Well...as suspected, there's always more to the story than you might think or than is reported. Here's the record of the conversation that the member had with VT Staff member Barbara: You can read the email transcript from bottom to top. I should mention that what is not shown is the verification process by which we asked the requester to provide their username and password so that we could be certain that the deletion request was legit. Which they did (I xxxx'ed out the password) --------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- -----Original Message----- From: travolta159@VTmail.com [mailto:travolta159@VTmail.com] Sent: Saturday, January 28, 2012 9:52 AM To: Barbara Vermillion Subject: RE: Cancel my account Hi Barbara. the site is the number one, i enjoyed every moment i spent online talking to my friends and people i never met, i am very happy for the chance you gave us all to share our happiness and experience. if there is any way to hide my profile in case i could come back in the near future? if not, then it's ok if you delete it? Fouad On Jan 26, 2012 at 11:48:05 PM WET, Barbara Vermillion wrote: > > Hi > Thank you for contacting us. I noticed that you have a significant > amount of pages, and I would hate to delete them, since we cannot > restore any tips or photo once they have been removed. > In the past we've found many people prefer to take a break, or simply > leave their content in case they change their minds later. I'm happy > to help you in any way you prefer. May I ask if there is a specific > problem you're having with the site? I'd like to see if I can correct > it before deleting all that work. > Thank you, > > Barbara > > VT Staff > Thanks, > -----Original Message----- > From: travolta159@VTmail.com [mailto:travolta159@VTmail.com] Posted At: > Thursday, January 26, 2012 4:17 AM Posted To: Feedback > Conversation: Cancel my account > Subject: Cancel my account > > please delete my account. > user name: travolta159 > pass : XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX > > > thank you. --------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------

Thanks G for going this far. PJ

No problem. :) Of course we strive to do a good job so it bothers me when something like this is hanging out there. Glad to have it sorted.

thanks PJ for showing how to get ones text back...though I still couldnt get to it, is that to do with my browser/google set up? Anyway Fouad who was Travolta159 is back on VT, he now has made a new HP and has called himself Inconsolable...he still says it wasnt him that wrote and asked to be deleted and no there was no advertising involved, and yes he has always been a star vter as far as I can see so Im glad hes stayed with VT despite this.

Glad he's back. There's always more than meets the eye, in these cases. I would find it odd that someone was able to send an email requesting deletion from the external email he has on file. Also strange that if his external email got hacked that the thing the hacker would do, would be to write to VT's feedback requesting that we hide the Travelta account for sometime, and then suggesting that we remove the account. Anyway. Good that he's back.

hi, I thing its a bit strange too but can only go on what he said and the dialgoue vt admin have disclosed...and i guess to this extent its not my business but i reckon its just a translation thing - he may have been having a dialogue that he didnt realise and didnt understand the full entirety of the words even though the copy of the dialgoue you sent did make several attempts to clarify the consequences!...