Why do you some of you people have PRIVATE on your profile?

No. There are many "trolls" in this forum. What they do is when you piss them off or disagree with them enough to make them hate you, they will actually take time out of their day [go figure] to go through your Q&A on your profile and attack your answers with thumbs-downs, give nasty answers to your questions, and vote against you in undecided questions you answered. They in turn ruin your Best Answer average, and wreck your reputation. Sometimes they even try to impersonate you with an identical avatar and name.

When you set your profile to private, all of that stops dead.

There are a lot of trolls on this site who love to pick on some of us and turn us in for supposed violations of the rules. Why make it any easier for them to find my answers? Let them work for it.

Some people don’t want to do it because they fear it will “hide” their questions and that they won’t get many answers. The truth is, when I ask a question you and everybody else will see it posted in the category so then you can answer unless I blocked you. When we make our profiles "private" the questions still post in the category we ask it in just like they always did. It's just harder for trolls to harass us.

If you want to make your questions and answers private, go to your profile. (Click "My Profile" in the green box near the upper-righthand side of the screen.) Then look for the link that says "Edit My Info" near your avatar but to the right of the avatar. Click onto that and you can make your profile private.

NO. IF YOU HAVE A STALKER, IT'S GOOD TO KEEP YOUR PRIVATES INACCESSIBLE.