Recommend a Personal Finance Forum?

[Lucan]

I have an income tax question to ask - can anyone recommend a forum for that sort of thing. I have found :
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com
... but it it does not respond when I click "Join" and seems to want you to join via Facebook or certain other social sites, and I'm not doing that. (Discussing your finances via Facebook* is a really bad idea - and they call themselves experts??!).

* Facebook is under a new criminal investigation :-
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/technology/facebook-data-deals-investigation.html

Federal prosecutors are conducting a criminal investigation into data deals Facebook struck with some of the world’s largest technology companies

 

[gg1]

I have an income tax question to ask - can anyone recommend a forum for that sort of thing. I have found :
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com
... but it it does not respond when I click "Join" and seems to want you to join via Facebook or certain other social sites, and I'm not doing that. (Discussing your finances via Facebook* is a really bad idea - and they call themselves experts??!).

* Facebook is under a new criminal investigation :-
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/technology/facebook-data-deals-investigation.html

I'm a member of MSE and don't have a facebook account, when I click the join button at the link you posted it just asks for an email address.

 

[underbank]

Likewise I use MSE a lot (on it every day) and don't have a facebook account - I registered using my email address.

 

[radamfi]

lemonfool.co.uk was set up when fool.co.uk announced the closure of their boards.

 

[Lucan]

Likewise I use MSE ... and don't have a facebook account - I registered using my email address.

moneysavingexpert seems to be a poorly designed site. The "Log In" and "Join" buttons on the forum home page do absolutely nothing in my up-to-date Firefox on Linux. I did a quick trial and found they did work in old versions (very old) of Firefox on WinXP and Win7, so I registered that way.

While trying to register it rejected several email address via a proxy that I could turn off if they were to start spamming me. I eventually used a Yahoo address that I last used 2 years ago and never generally look at, so they are the loser. There is no way I give my "real" email address to anyone these days.

Having registered, and back on the modern Firefox, the "Log In" and "Join" buttons on the forum home page are still inert, but I found I could log in by starting to make a reply to a discussion thread, where upon a log-in box popped up. Having logged in I cannot see any way of logging out though, not that that matters.

I checked I have scripting and pop-ups enabled, but I guess they are unnecessarily using some fancy scripting, possibly some Microsoft exclusive stuff. I though those bad old days days on the web were over by now

 

[ilkestonian]

Another recommendation for lemonfool.co.uk

Wide ranging advice on most financial and legal issues from a helpful and friendly bunch of knowledgeable contributors.

 

[telstarbox]

On MSE people will give you correct advice but in the rudest way possible

 

[Journeyman]

moneysavingexpert seems to be a poorly designed site.

It may well be, but...the advice on it is absolutely spot-on and has both saved and made me thousands in the time I've been using it.

 

[Flying Snail]

On MSE people will give you correct advice but in the rudest way possible

I'd rather that than them being friendly and incorrect though, nothing worse than morons posting stuff they half-heard in the pub as fact.

 

[GaryMcEwan]

On MSE people will give you correct advice but in the rudest way possible

Aye and then some. I stumbled on something regarding smart meters and couldn't help myself getting involved as what the posters saying was factually wrong. They bluntly said I was wrong even in possession of facts.

It's a website I now avoid religiously.

 

[whhistle]

The "Log In" and "Join" buttons on the forum home page do absolutely nothing in my up-to-date Firefox on Linux. I did a quick trial and found they did work in old versions (very old) of Firefox on WinXP and Win7, so I registered that way.

They do work with many other people though, so that would point to something working incorrectly on your system.
Why not use a better browser, like Chrome. Think Google want to spy on you? Use Chromium, or another version of the same based browser.
Hell, even Microsoft are getting in on the action as their next version of Edge will be Chromium based.

While trying to register it rejected several email address via a proxy that I could turn off if they were to start spamming me. I eventually used a Yahoo address that I last used 2 years ago and never generally look at, so they are the loser. There is no way I give my "real" email address to anyone these days.

Emails via a proxy? Complicated!
Why not just get a Gmail or Outlook address and add an alias, then use that.
Or better still, if you have no intention of caring what emails are sent (risky with password resets though!) - use a disposable email service like 10minutemail.com or something similar.

If you don't give your real email address to anyone, who emails you?

FYI: I have a personal adddress, which is friends, family, the bank, NHS, Amazon... important companies. A seperate address which I use for less important companies. Another one for forums and sites I don't care much for, and another one still for one time access accounts.

I do hope you don't use your ISP email!

 

[Lucan]

Emails via a proxy? Complicated! Why not just get a Gmail or Outlook address and add an alias, then use that.

Perhaps our understandings of "proxy" are different; you might call it a "remailer". I use Spamgourmet [SG] which receives my incoming mail and then forwards it to my "real" email address. In my SG account I can use alaises with a choice of about 20 different domains and an infinite numer of user names - so every merchant or forum has a different identifiable (to me) version of my address. So if I get spam from anywhere I know who has sold or leaked one of my addresses (and then I turn it off). I also send mail out through SG and it replaces details of its origin by an alias of my choice.

WRT Gmail, I prefer a pure email application, not a web-based service that adds ads (I understand) and can spy on you. From Wikipedia : "Google's mail servers automatically scan emails for multiple purposes ..." - enough said. Outlook is a Microsoft thing - enough said.

Or better still, if you have no intention of caring what emails are sent (risky with password resets though!) - use a disposable email service like 10minutemail.com

10minutemail.com gives you an address that is killed after 10 minutes. SG and certain others similar do not kill the address unless you ask it to, or you can allow a count. For example I gave this forum an SG address to which I have given permanent "trusted" status and I'm happy to keep it that way - unless of course they start spamming me one day.

If you don't give your real email address to anyone, who emails you?

A few friends, and Spamgourmet as the collector for the rest. SG is long established and has an excellent ethic. Aliasing can of course be used by spammers, which is why Moneysavingexpert do not allow it I suppose. SG does not tolerate any misuse and you would soon be kicked off if you tried. Unfortunately the guy who runs SG is unable to continue much longer and I am looking for an alternative, although some regular users (including me) are talking about forming a board to adopt and continue running it.

I do hope you don't use your ISP email!

What is wrong with that? I'm puzzled.

 

[whhistle]

What is wrong with that? I'm puzzled.

As you so nicely put it, enough said!

Too much tin hat for me.

 

[Clip]

As you so nicely put it, enough said!

Too much tin hat for me.

Exactly what I thought when I read - I use my gmail for everything and its no great effort to click any spam that gets through as just that and let it take care of the rest of them automatically - imagine how much time and effort it is to set up all that above just for the sake of 'privacy'

 

[whhistle]

This is where Tech companies aren't helping though.

It was Microsoft that touted "Google reads your email" to encorage people to sign up to Outlook instead.

Gmail doesn't "read your email" - which conjours visions of some employee literally reading your emails one by one.
What it does is scan your emails to pick up on certain words, such as "Sofa" or "DFS" and serve you ads based on what it sees. You'll also see those same ads on other websites.

To Google, you're a number, not a person.
All they want to do is know everything about you, so they can serve you ads "relevent" to you.

Same with all that Windows 10 sending info back to Microsoft.
Yes, it sends back certain things (although you can turn off a lot!) but I bet nothing would be personally identifiable to you.

It was only recently that Tim Berners-Lee said that the internet has grown into something he didn't like or want.
We're trading our privacy to use it.
I accept that trade off... to a certain extent.

That's wherever possible, I turn off advertising tracking.
It takes slightly less time for me to move on after seeing a random ad about something I am not interested in, than if I was served an ad that is something I've been looking at.
Take a hike! I came off the DFS website as I'd finished looking. Serving me an ad about what I was just looking at is wasting my time.

 

[Lucan]

Gmail doesn't "read your email" - which conjours visions of some employee literally reading your emails one by one. What it does is scan your emails ... and serve you ads based on what it sees.

Of course it is automated, a point I made in quoting Google :

From Wikipedia : "Google's mail servers automatically scan emails for multiple purposes ..."

.Maybe it does conjour up such visions of manual reading in some people, but you would need to employ quite a large portion of World population to do that. Moreover, even if they employed the stupidest people to do it, I don't think they could be as stupid as the algorithms that are behind targetted advertising.

I do hope you don't use your ISP email!

I still don't understand the point here. Unless you are a major IT company connected directly to the backbone of the internet, your email will be going through at least one commercial entity (your ISP) and probably several, any of which can read what you say and see what you surf. The only way to stop emails being read and understood is to encrypt them. My point is that some commercial entities are more likely scan your emails and other messages for saleable data than others, and have acquired a reputation for it - eg Facebook, Google, Microsoft - in fact the bigger the organisation the more likely they are to do this. My own ISP is a small outfit, not cheap but with an excellent reputation; I have never had spam email sent to my native address with them - so I know for sure they are not selling that at least.

With adblocking and use of Spamgourmet, I rarely see an ad* or spam on the internet. I see none on my regular forums (including this one - are there meant to be?) and my own couple of modest websites have none. The big exception is Ebay which I need to use a lot; they bombard me with spam while my email channel to them is open as it must be during my buying and selling transactions. Ebay are so stupid that they urge me to buy other items of the very same things that I am selling at the time.

* Unless of course I am deliberately looking for them, eg when I Google for a local plumber.

 

[Clip]

Yes I use adblock but thats only because I hate seeing adverts everywhere but all my emails are already encrypted with TLS with Google so if they want to read/scan them then they are more than welcome too really.

However you seem to be treating your privacy with
some difficulty and you would be so much more at ease with satellites watching your every move if you just got a VPN and be done with it - so much easier to manage than what you are doing now to be honest