The Lemon Fool

hope this is correct board.



we had a letter in the post --

addressed to (my village) neighbour (my address) .

from lorna brown (my village) re NEXTDOOR (my village)

with what seemed to be a 2nd class blue stamp delivered by royal mail.

it all seemed to be from a local person in my local village .

in fact the stamp was a dummy (printed) and the person fictitious.

attempts to sign up require full personal details .

has anyone used them ?

jackdaww wrote:hope this is correct board.

we had a letter in the post --

addressed to (my village) neighbour (my address) .

from lorna brown (my village) re NEXTDOOR (my village)

with what seemed to be a 2nd class blue stamp delivered by royal mail.

it all seemed to be from a local person in my local village .

in fact the stamp was a dummy (printed) and the person fictitious.

attempts to sign up require full personal details .

has anyone used them ?

Nextdoor are a 'local' social media site where people from the same general area sign up to talk about local issues. Nextdoor took over Streetlife (another local social media site) last year but has struggled to attract new members in the same way that Streetlife did, mainly because it asks for too many personal details from you up front (inc address which it used to state alongside your name - not good).

So not a scam, a legitimate site but of which you still think twice about before registering with too many details.

HYD

jackdaww wrote:hope this is correct board.

we had a letter in the post --

addressed to (my village) neighbour (my address) .

from lorna brown (my village) re NEXTDOOR (my village)

with what seemed to be a 2nd class blue stamp delivered by royal mail.

it all seemed to be from a local person in my local village .

in fact the stamp was a dummy (printed) and the person fictitious.

attempts to sign up require full personal details .

has anyone used them ?

Yet another advert pusher???

https://legal.nextdoor.com/gb-cookie-policy/

What Other Related Technologies Does Nextdoor Use, and Why?

Tracking Pixels: Our advertising partners may use tracking pixels or similar technology to measure the success of the sponsored posts or other advertising products they use. A “tracking pixel” (also sometimes called web beacon, or clear GIF) is a tiny piece of code, invisible to the user, placed on a webpage or in an email and used in combination with a cookie, to link a given activity or impression back to the user; the advertiser includes it in its content so it can measure whether our members interact with that content (for example, by clicking to view an offer). We may set our own tracking pixel on an advertiser’s website so we can measure whether our members found the advertiser’s content effective or interesting, by tracking whether the sponsored post prompted members to take advantage of the advertised offer. This information helps us assess whether sponsored posts and other advertising offers are relevant and interesting to our members and successful for the advertiser.

jackdaww wrote:hope this is correct board.

No, probably not.

The LoOTPians have a twisited warped refined sense of humour and are prone to mercilessly mock take the mickey out of respond humorously to unsuspecting new posters.

Fortunately for you this was taken seriously and treated as a DAK (which would probably have been the correct board).

Edit: and now I see the Mods have made it a DAK while I was replying.

Breelander wrote:

jackdaww wrote:hope this is correct board.

No, probably not.

The LoOTPians have a twisited warped refined sense of humour and are prone to mercilessly mock take the mickey out of respond humorously to unsuspecting new posters.

Fortunately for you this was taken seriously and treated as a DAK (which would probably have been the correct board).

Edit: and now I see the Mods have made it a DAK while I was replying.

===============================

thanks

my mistake.

perhaps there should be a social media / communications board .

there's a lot of it about .

Nextdoor took over Streetlife (another local social media site) last year but has struggled to attract new members in the same way that Streetlife did, mainly because it asks for too many personal details from you up front (inc address which it used to state alongside your name - not good).

Never heard of them, but if they're anything like Facebook, I'd just give my address as that of the nearest Police station or the vicar's house, alter my DOB very slightly but give just enough info for genuine 'family&friends' to recognise me.

Steve

PS These sites 'do' make mistakes. I am listed on Facebook as going to a college that I've never heard of, and certainly did not type myself.

Reviving an old thread. I've just had a letter identical to jackdaww's, ostensibly from someone in our village who doesn't appear to exist. (It's a small village.) Hmmmm....... Is anybody else using it? Upsides, downsides?

At present I'm not feeling inclined to take up the kind offer - partly because I don't do social media at all anyway, but mostly because I don't think it's a particularly great idea to have my name and full address plastered over anything that I contributed to the group. There are just too many stories of people getting caught up in neighbourhood disputes because they complained about bad parking or loud parties or dogsh*t. (Or Brex*t, for that matter.)

And then there are those, apparently, who use Nextdoor to yoohoo to all their friends from Marbella, where they're spending two weeks on the beach. Okay, that's fourteen days now that the burglars have got now to get into the house and do their stuff. Duhhhhhh.

But hey, what's the worst that can happen? Your posts will only be seen by people from your area, no? Not if the stories about false email identities and spoofed house numbers are anything to go by. So how long before I start getting approaches from bored housewives called Tammy or Britney who just happen to live close to me?

BJ

I had one of these a week or two ago. I must admit I have no idea whether it was a printed stamp or if the sender was fictitious, it never occurred to me to check. It just went straight in the recycling bin.

bungeejumper wrote:Reviving an old thread. I've just had a letter identical to jackdaww's, ostensibly from someone in our village who doesn't appear to exist. (It's a small village.) Hmmmm....... Is anybody else using it? Upsides, downsides?

At present I'm not feeling inclined to take up the kind offer - partly because I don't do social media at all anyway, but mostly because I don't think it's a particularly great idea to have my name and full address plastered over anything that I contributed to the group. There are just too many stories of people getting caught up in neighbourhood disputes because they complained about bad parking or loud parties or dogsh*t. (Or Brex*t, for that matter.)

And then there are those, apparently, who use Nextdoor to yoohoo to all their friends from Marbella, where they're spending two weeks on the beach. Okay, that's fourteen days now that the burglars have got now to get into the house and do their stuff. Duhhhhhh.

But hey, what's the worst that can happen? Your posts will only be seen by people from your area, no? Not if the stories about false email identities and spoofed house numbers are anything to go by. So how long before I start getting approaches from bored housewives called Tammy or Britney who just happen to live close to me?

BJ

Here's a story confirming your concerns: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38920906

I had originally signed up with Streetlife, since acquired by Nextdoor. They do encourage you to provide names and addresses of friends you'd like to invite. Nextdoor will then send them an invitation in the post.

In my area, the postings to the group were mostly from people offering services from their home businesses - massages, healing, etc.

That's not of interest to me so I closed my Nextdoor account last year.

Our local Facebook group is far more useful though.

Watis

Stompa wrote:I had one of these a week or two ago. I must admit I have no idea whether it was a printed stamp

By gad, sir, your eagle eye was better than mine. Yes, the second class stamp on my invitation letter has been printed onto the envelope, and lovingly franked with a printed cancellation mark as well. Well spotted.

Thanks for your reply as well, Watis. Much appreciated!

BJ

I use Nextdoor, but rarely post
It's mostly;
Advertising for local services (which can be useful)
Lost and found
Missing cats. They normally turn up...

bungeejumper wrote:

Stompa wrote:I had one of these a week or two ago. I must admit I have no idea whether it was a printed stamp

By gad, sir, your eagle eye was better than mine. Yes, the second class stamp on my invitation letter has been printed onto the envelope, and lovingly franked with a printed cancellation mark as well. Well spotted.

Thanks for your reply as well, Watis. Much appreciated!

BJ

I'll raise you. My letter from Lorna Brown came with no stamp at all, which fooled me into thinking it was hand-delivered to me specifically!

I still binned it though, having decided I neither knew Lorna nor trusted the site.

Not sure Facebook is any more trustworthy though.

Thanks for the heads up. I had a letter from them a couple of weeks ago. I'd have signed up too had it not been for the fact that the letter said the access code on the letter only worked for 7 days and it was more than that when i got round to reading it so it went in the bin.

Mike4 wrote:
I'll raise you. My letter from Lorna Brown came with no stamp at all, which fooled me into thinking it was hand-delivered to me specifically!

I still binned it though, having decided I neither knew Lorna nor trusted the site.

Not sure Facebook is any more trustworthy though.

I am

It must be catching because I too had a letter from Nextdoor a week or so ago. Without thinking about it any more, I just threw it in my recycling bin.

I treat it like the invites I get to join Probus. No thank you.

Dod

we got one a few weeks back. Like the above it was a printed letter made out to look like handwritten, to "Wthe occupier" and our address etc.

I did some quick googling out of uinterigue and didnt come across anything suggesting any scams, or anything dodgy. I binned it anyway, but this thread got me thinking.

Iff it really is free to sue (CF facebook, twitter etc) then whats the slighly sinister marketing all about and who/what funds it for what reasons? Smacks of some sort of pyramid scheme to be honest (based on only the above admittedly and my cynicism!)

didds

didds wrote:Iff it really is free to sue (CF facebook, twitter etc) then whats the slighly sinister marketing all about and who/what funds it for what reasons? Smacks of some sort of pyramid scheme to be honest (based on only the above admittedly and my cynicism!)

It's been around for a long time - started in the States, I think, where people are a lot less cagey than us about personal online privacy. So although many of us would recoil from having our addresses published under everything we write, it doesn't seem to strike too many Americans that way.

AFAIK, the business model revolves strictly around advertising, which seems straightforward enough. But when you learn that it's perfectly easy to "break into" somebody's local community by faking your login credentials, the whole thing becomes a little more cynical and a little less safe. Women who are trying to hide from abusive partners are only one group who don't fit the Nextdoor format. The abusive partners are another.

BJ

AleisterCrowley wrote:I use Nextdoor, but rarely post
It's mostly;
Advertising for local services (which can be useful)
Lost and found
Missing cats. They normally turn up...

I've not signed up but one thing it was useful for was during the petrol shortage, for local intelligence on which petrol stations had petrol.

Watis wrote:Our local Facebook group is far more useful though.

So it isn’t full of - cat lost, cat found, dog lost, dog found, bad parking photos, bad sunset / sunrise photos, complaints about dog mess / councils / potholes, questions that could be answered by Google, etc.

AF62 wrote: ........... questions that could be answered by Google, etc.

Sounds like DAK.