Viewing member profiles is a permission you grant your users so if you want to disallow it then go to the permissions management in the forum admin and turn it off. You can turn it on or off for selected permission sets. Remember – as a forum admin you will always be able to view the profiles no matter what is set.

Thanks for your reply.

What I’m asking is this:

Is there a way to ALLOW individual members to hide their profiles from other members? So if, say, a particular member wasn’t comfortable having the details viewed, they could turn it off.

No, afraid there is no way for individual users to choose to hide their profile… its all or nothing as it stands now…

Mr Papa said
No, afraid there is no way for individual users to choose to hide their profile… its all or nothing as it stands now…

Hate to say this but is not this a huge privacy issue.. 

I can see an argument that says allowing individual members to hide profile details is valid on privacy grounds. And I think that we should probably consider doing this.

Having said that, I would also counter by saying that websites – particularly those that need registration to – should be providing a set of privacy and usage terms that a user agrees to. I believe this may even be a lawful requirement in some territories – and such an agreement should cover the availability of profile data to other users or the general public.

At the same time it is entirely up to individual users to decide what profile data they supply and wish to be shown. By default SP displays minimal data on a user.

Users have a right no matter where they are to share or not share their info.  This need that as well.   People are leaving FaceBook in droves because of this same issue they just started. Private is private. 

Point said no further discussion need on this, need to be available period.