(no subject)
Jun. 23rd, 2007 01:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meoraeA couple of months ago, I came across this excellent entry about privacy. It's something we all should be aware of. "Protecting your privacy, and the privacy of loved ones, in the 21st Century is not something you can do only part time. It has to be a purposeful intent that is integrated into every post you make, every profile you fill out, every event roster you sign, every cause you support, every review you write and every reply you make on a public blog, e-mail list or forum."
I got a facebook a month and a half ago and it, as well as that entry, has made me think about my privacy. I started out with a link to my livejournal in my facebook profile but removed it after more people started friending me, thinking that I didn't really want to connect my real life identity with my online identity and in many ways my private thoughts. I also started out comfortable with the privacy settings I chose, but I haven't changed them even though I've friended many more people, including two of my teachers, and joined the Boston network. I can easily change the privacy settings so I feel comfortable with the amount of information I'm sharing with my friends and everyone in my networks, but it just made me think about my level of privacy online.
I google meorae and my real name regularly to see what shows up. I also google my phone numbers, home address and email addresses. Nothing ever comes up for the phone numbers/email addresses/addresses and nothing comes up of me for my real name. There are plenty of hits for meorae, mainly because half of you allow indexing of your journals, so your profiles and a few entries I've commented on come up. And I'm perfectly fine with all of that. Whenever I remember to, I also check the different blog search engines to see if any of my livejournal entries are cached and I've only come across two that a couple of search engines cached before I turned the robot thing off.
But then looking at my public entries and profile, I've revealed my age/birthday, my grade, the names of most of my teachers/classes, my location, my school and my first name to anyone who reads my entries. On my profile, I also show all of my schools and my email address, although those are shown only to people I've friended. That's more information than I would think I reveal, but I just found all of that in about five of my previous public entries. And I don't know how I feel about that. That's enough information to know who I am. It's not enough information for a random stalker to easily contact/find me, but it wouldn't be too hard. I try to be careful by not posting my full name/phone numbers/address, f-locking photos and keeping track of what google could reveal about me. But a lot of smaller things get by and I'm glad I looked. I don't think I'll delete the information or f-lock any of the entries that contain it, but I'm aware of it now and I need to work out my boundaries for privacy.
I got a facebook a month and a half ago and it, as well as that entry, has made me think about my privacy. I started out with a link to my livejournal in my facebook profile but removed it after more people started friending me, thinking that I didn't really want to connect my real life identity with my online identity and in many ways my private thoughts. I also started out comfortable with the privacy settings I chose, but I haven't changed them even though I've friended many more people, including two of my teachers, and joined the Boston network. I can easily change the privacy settings so I feel comfortable with the amount of information I'm sharing with my friends and everyone in my networks, but it just made me think about my level of privacy online.
I google meorae and my real name regularly to see what shows up. I also google my phone numbers, home address and email addresses. Nothing ever comes up for the phone numbers/email addresses/addresses and nothing comes up of me for my real name. There are plenty of hits for meorae, mainly because half of you allow indexing of your journals, so your profiles and a few entries I've commented on come up. And I'm perfectly fine with all of that. Whenever I remember to, I also check the different blog search engines to see if any of my livejournal entries are cached and I've only come across two that a couple of search engines cached before I turned the robot thing off.
But then looking at my public entries and profile, I've revealed my age/birthday, my grade, the names of most of my teachers/classes, my location, my school and my first name to anyone who reads my entries. On my profile, I also show all of my schools and my email address, although those are shown only to people I've friended. That's more information than I would think I reveal, but I just found all of that in about five of my previous public entries. And I don't know how I feel about that. That's enough information to know who I am. It's not enough information for a random stalker to easily contact/find me, but it wouldn't be too hard. I try to be careful by not posting my full name/phone numbers/address, f-locking photos and keeping track of what google could reveal about me. But a lot of smaller things get by and I'm glad I looked. I don't think I'll delete the information or f-lock any of the entries that contain it, but I'm aware of it now and I need to work out my boundaries for privacy.
