A discussion developed in response to a friend's post about the security of entries here on OPW. I worked through my current understanding of the Key/Lock system here on a comment thread, and thought I would repost it here, publicly, for reference. Tom, if 1. You see this 2. it's accurate and 3. you are so inclined, feel free to copy and/or link to this post for reference. I'm happy to edit this post if that proves easier.

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Let's assume I lock ALL of my posts with stop light colors. I would do that because I don't want Google or John Q. Public to be able to read what I write here. If I DID want that, I could just make the post "Public" and all the world could see them. At least that's my current understanding.

But I don't. I lock them all for the purposes of this scenario.

Posts that are pretty friendly to everyone get a Green Lock. I create that here: https://onepostwonder.com/friends# under the _New lock_ link. Posts that are only for close friends get an Yellow Lock, and of course, posts that show my Deep Dark Secrets and are thus only for my singnificant other get a Red Lock.

Then, I can give each person the correlating keys to the locks I want them to be able to open. I would do that for my imaginary friend Jane Doe here: https://onepostwonder.com/users/ImaginaryFriendJaneDoe and clicking on the _Give keys_ link under her her profile info.

This system allows for really accurate filtering, and kudos to Tom for using it. As I see it, the only 'down side' is that it could theoretically get pretty complicated over time if you had a lot of situational locks that you wanted to create. So while I don't use the system I described above, my system isn't far off.

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Side thought: I just realized that I have no idea if/how 'hidden' response comments are to posts. ie - if I have access to my imaginary friend Jane Doe's entries, do I get to see responses by people I have no access to?

My gut reaction is yes, that I _can_ see those responses, but I'll have to double check.