"Please hide the serial number of the device before posting an export to a public forum since it may be used to trace you ip address if using the Mikrotik cloud (serialnumber.sn.mynetname.net)."
Well, it's safer to keep the address private. On the other hand, who really cares about someone's address? Botnets are scanning internet day and night and if something is open, they will find it. And if it's not open, then in most cases it's safe whether someone knows the address or not. It is possible that someone could collect info from this forum, but there's not that much of it anyway, so it's probably not worth it. So there is some risk, but not too big. But yes, hide-sensitive should hide serial number.
Since the root cause of the problem is that the serial number is directly mapped to the IP cloud service, imho Mikrotik should in the long run try find another solution where the two are decoupled from each other.
Nice thing about current scheme is that it's simple and foolproof, you don't need any registration, choosing names, or anything, it just works with single checkbox. I don't know how exactly it's implemented, but it can be pretty safe if it depends not only on serial number but also on some secret per-device key that MikroTik knows, but can't be derived from serial number by anyone else, so nobody can just spend an afternoon with disassembler and crack the update protocol. I guess Software ID could be used for this, it's rather short, but even old boards have it.
Sob your vetting skills are deteriorating with age......... what next, no swimming trunks required for the pool>?
Fine by me, as long as they are not banned. I'm a bit shy myself, but if someone else wants to feel more free or whatever, who am I to deny it to them.