Do you find this place incredibly noisy?

People chattering away all over the place?

Everyone knowing everyone elses business?

Does this really annoy you at times?


Well this piece will give you a step by step guide on how to set up a secret little place for you and your select little group to chat in as close to total privacy as you'll ever get around here.

Finding Your Place

Obviously if you want to be having 'private' chats you don't want the conversation thread hanging off of your own user page, or from any page associated with you. The solution is to create a new identity and work with that one instead.

Setting Up Your Place

1. Hit the 'Logout' button (remembering of course your own login details first)
2. Go to 'Register' page and set up a new user account (also remembering the login details of this account.)
3. In your new account, DO NOT change the nickname or activate the user page. This is so that you can avoid the attentions of a passing ACE at a later date.
4. Activate the journal in this new identity, just add a blank posting with a pretty non descript subject line.
5. Hit 'Logout' again.
6. Log back in as yourself again and find the user page of this new account that you've just set up (see I told you you would need to remember the details of this new account.)
7. Post a reply in the journal of this new account. This automatically subscribes you to this thread.
8. Hit 'Logout' again.
9. Log back in as the new user
10. Delete the journal entry
• This is the key part of the exercise. Once you've deleted the journal entry this new account will look exactly the same as all the tens of thousands of unused accounts that litter h2g2, and will never attract the attentions of any passing ACEs.
• However the thread that that journal entry started will still exist, and you (as yourself) are the only person subscribed to it.
11. You can now invite friends over (preferably by e-mail) to post to this thread and you have yourself a private little conversation that no one can find by searching any entries associated with you.

Adding Security

If there is some really devious stalker out there looking for your 'private' conversations, then they can find this private thread if they match your My Conversations page with your correspondents conversations page. So this is how to foil them.

1. In one of the first postings you make to the thread, include a keyword that will show up when you use the 'Search Conversations' function on the Advanced Search page
• A good choice of keyword is one that won't give you pages and pages of results. The best being mispellings of tradenames, such as Marnite or Buvril for example.
• Remember this keyword (obvious really, but some people...)
2. Wait a couple of days for the Advanced Search to be updated with all new site activity, and check that your keyword works.
3. Unsubscribe from the 'private' thread.
4. The next time you want to check the thread and make a posting, find it by entering the keyword into 'Search Conversations' function.
5. As soon as you've posted, unsubscribe from the thread again.
• This will mean that the 'private' conversation is only visible on your 'My Conversations' page for the time between posting to the thread and unsubscribing from it - ie seconds.

Nothing is Really Private

Remember that nothing you post on h2g2 is ever truly private. All you are doing by applying this is making life as hard as possible for someone who is following you.

By the act of posting you've given the BBC the right to use your words. Also every posting is always read by a moderator to check it against House Rules, and the Italics no doubt have a number of search tools available to them to track you down should they so choose.