Content Sharing and Privacy Options

Your privacy is important to us, and we suspect it's even more important to you.  So we've created a number of different ways for you to manage the sharing and privacy of your content.  These are the currently available options, all of which are subject to "The Big Caveat" below.Public. Content that is Public can be seen by anyone, whether logged into the site or not. This content can be discovered using the Search function on the site, or by search engines crawli...

Your privacy is important to us, and we suspect it's even more important to you.  So we've created a number of different ways for you to manage the sharing and privacy of your content.  These are the currently available options, all of which are subject to "The Big Caveat" below.

• Public. Content that is Public can be seen by anyone, whether logged into the site or not. This content can be discovered using the Search function on the site, or by search engines crawling the site. Public content is just that -- publicly visible to everyone.
• Unlisted. Unlisted content is really just less-public content. Unlisted content is not included in site-level searches or public lists on our site, and is not part of the content index we share with search engines, but is still visible to those with a direct link the the content URL.
  
  This means the content will remain essentially private and invisible to the external world until you link anything public or otherwise visible to it. At that point, it's basically public. For instance, if you link from a piece of Public content to Unlisted content using the "Related" function, both users and search engines can follow that link to the Unlisted content.
  
  Also, if you make content Public, and then make it Unlisted, their is no way to tell search engines to stop indexing it. The content will not appear in our site searches, but it may still be very visible and public. Unlisted content should be treated as the lowest level of content security; it's a great way to enable sharing with minimal public prying, but it's not a guarantee of true privacy.
• Private (Account Users Only). Content set to Private is only visible if (A) you are or were recently logged in (B) you are a valid user in the account that published the content and (C) you are actually in that account.  This content can still be included in collections, widgets and websites with any privacy setting (See "The Big Caveat" below).
• Un-Published / Not Published.  It may seem strange to call this a privacy or sharing setting, but in effect that's just what publish status is.  Items that are not published are basically the same as Private content that also CANNOT be viewed inside of any widget, collection or website.  In other words, it's the one "privacy setting" to which The Big Caveat does not apply.

The Big Caveat
Privacy is a sticky business, and we've done our best to give you the options you need to protect your content.  However, there is one major way that you can make "Private" and other unshared content basically public -- and that is to include this content in a feed, collection, widget or website.

Anyone viewing these web components, whether on your site or elsewhere, can see all the content in the component.  This includes Private content.

The reason for this is that you may want to make really sure for, say, SEO purposes that no one can see you content on our site.  But this content may be intended for use on your public website or in public widgets.  The Private content remains hidden on our site, but it's obviously not "Private" anymore in the general sense.

Setting Privacy Levels
You can set the privacy level for your content inside the content editor, or on the profile of that content when logged in as an account user.

Setting Privacy Defaults
You can set the default privacy level for your content in the Content Preferences section of your Account dashboard.  This applies to both new content and content that is "Saved As" or remotely created.

The Other Caveat
For various reasons, we try hard to protect your content, but we can't guarantee the privacy of your content.

Help Us Improve
We're working on even more privacy and security options, so if you have ideas on how to make this better, let us know.