there is no guarantee that any site is secure. i'm sure they have teams of people working on online banking security, for example, but there are hacks into the system sometimes. i'd imagine that the security involved in online banking is a lot better than what one could realistically expect from an online community message board. that being said, the motivation for hacking into an online banking system is also considerably greater and i'd imagine that often there would be a team of hackers devoted to the project. typically, not much harm is done, however. not much harm to the consumers at any rate. one might feel violated, sure, and that is understandable, but the banks tend to put the situation right (in the sense of nobody losing money over it).

but anonymity isn't a feature of online banking.

i think it is worth thinking a bit about how much your anonymity means to you. while it seems that this site is more current with respect to security (thus making it harder to hack) it also seems that this site encourages people to provide a lot more in the way of personal information to the server such that there would be a great deal more for people to lose were that information to be hacked.

if one is posting about ones mental health issues and it is really very important that ones employers / future employers etc not have that information then i'd really suggest you not provide information that would enable anyone to identify you were they to hack into the server. that is fairly much common sense, but i think it is worth stating. there could be the possibility of blackmail, for example, if a person had posted posts that they would really not want their employer, supervisor, spouse, children, parents etc to be reading.

something i'm also a little cautious about is how people who have been regarded as 'mentally disordered' may be treated in future (with respect to the government wanting to compile databases for various reasons). i have heard of someone who went to court for a custody battle and her posts were hauled up as support for the notion that she was an unfit mother. there are circumstances in which legal agencies can require doc john to provide the information that he has available. all of this is somewhat seperate from the hacking problem, but these sorts of considerations are important with respect to your deciding how much information you provide to an online mental health community EVEN IF hacking was not a possibility (which, of course, it is).

the safest path of all is of course abstinence.

but the benefits to participating and being able to talk about deeply personal stuff can make the trade-off such that the benefits outweigh the risks. i guess here one has to go 'what risks', however. there are things one can do to minimise risk (such as not providing information to the server which would enable someone with that information to identify you IRL).

i'm not as careful as i should be.

this incident has reminded me of that.