Free Traffic Legal Advice

Love both relying on statue and some FMOTL nonsense.

On the flipside, they do deserve some sympathy for being the only person in the country held to task for parking outside a school. We walk to school but the local residents are always angry about school run mums abandoning their cars across driveways and sometimes just in the middle of the road to get their sprog a few metres closer to the school gate.

Wish someone had taken over andyfoster.

You're forgetting how much more manpower the police put into prosecuting motorists then drug dealers.

Anyway, ultimately it's your choice. I think it is unwise to rely on a one man band in Illinois but you're right in that comparing it to the old forums this is still better. If you'd like assistance setting it up on your own hosting the offer is still there, takes all of 15 minutes to do and IMO will futureproof the site a lot better.

What "secure" data is held on this public forum exactly?

Well, people are asking for legal advice with their IP address. IP address is personal data under GDPR and bearing in mind police forces used to scrape the old Pepipoo (hence using images for police forces) no doubt they will eventually do the same here.

There's a reason why if you are taking legal advice from a solicitor you don't send an anonymous transcript of the conversation to the police to see if they can match it up with an existing case.

But if you think the data on this site has no value either to the admins or anyone else, whether it be the police or someone trying to make money that is your decision. CaF obviously see value in the data which is why they monetise the links.

This site is still in its early days. I’m happy to receive constructive advice and help. Frankly, I don’t understand much of what you’ve said (though I’ve also not taken any time to research it) - but if you can articulate a ‘better way’ in simple terms I’ll listen.

On a normal forum you have control of the database and so if you need to move to a new host, new software or whatever you are able to do this.

With this setup, someone else controls the data which means it is practically very difficult if the host decides to stop offering the service, close the forum, even start charging high fees, because you need to pay them for the data of all the users, posts etc and very likely even if you did it's not going to be in a useful format you can use to move the forum somewhere else.

Additionally, at the moment CreateaForum are monetising all the links which means they are getting revenue which could instead go towards paying for the site costs.

Certainly CreateaForum could be a great company who will host the site without issue. But if they turn out not to be or just want to close the business, or someone takes it over with the aim to charge the existing client base then very likely the forum will need to start from scratch again or pay whatever they ask.

Hosting is cheap, and if the forum was hosted by FTLA then there would be no need to rely on one company. Multiple people could receive daily/weekly backups. You can also control what forum software you want to use and upgrade as and when for security or aesthetic reasons rather than being reliant on the current host.

tl;dr Data is valuable, and the current setup means we are locked into the current provider who may or may not continue to provide access on the same terms in future.

The site is hosted in the US, so it is protected by the first amendment (which is broader than Article 10 of the ECHR) and any letters from a UK police force are likely to end up in the bin.

That being said, things are being put in place via an offshore limited company.

No idea what 1st amendment has to do with anything unless we're running a church.

Their privacy policy allows them to disclose anything they want. Maybe they would ignore any requests but to me it seems a bit short sighted to avoid a third party with no interest in the site controlling the data and potentially disclosing or even deleting it for any reason.

We will disclose any information about you to government or law enforcement officials or private parties as we, in our sole discretion, believe necessary or appropriate to respond to claims and legal process (such as subpoena requests), to protect our property and rights or the property and rights of a third party, to protect the safety of the public or any person, or to prevent or stop activity we consider to be illegal or unethical.

I would say the relatively little extra work to create a self hosted forum would quite likely be worth it in the medium term and happy to help (used to work as a web developer) if there is interest. It should also be possible to get all the content from the old forum into a new one if it's self hosted so keep accumulated knowledge.