One of the great things about the Macmillan Online Community is that you can share problems and worries that you might not be able to talk about with your family and friends. Many members feel that anonymity is very valuable to them – it makes them feel safe to share their experiences. However, as is always the case on the internet, it’s important to take steps to protect your privacy. 

Our Community Guidelines are designed to encourage members to remain anonymous. But, just as a reminder, here are some top tips to help you protect your privacy while using our Community:

• Don’t share your personal contact details, such as your phone number, email address or Facebook profile. If you’d like to contact another member privately, you can send them a private message, if you are friends on the Community. To send a friend request, click on the member’s username to visit their profile, and then click ‘add as friend’.

• Don’t use your real full name as your username. You might want to use your first name, a nickname, or any word or phrase you think describes you. If you would like to change your username, please drop us an email on community@macmillan.org.uk.

• Remember that forum discussions, blog posts and blog comments can be viewed by people who aren’t logged in to the Community (you do need to be logged in to view profile pages, discussions in private groups, and the chat room). This is important to allow new members to find us and get support – our statistics show that many people arrive here for the first time by using a search engine term that can only be found in the forums, not on the rest of the Macmillan site.

• Be careful when you include details in your posts that might be used to identify you. For example, you might want to avoid very detailed information about where you live and work. If you are worried about the content of anything you have posted, you can go back and edit any forum or blog post.

• The same goes for your profile picture. You can change this on your ‘My Account’ page. We offer a choice of avatars, or else you can upload a new picture of your own.