for the longest time, i’ve hesitated putting my full name anywhere on the web. in fact, i think you won’t find it in this blog. nor did i ever mention exactly where i live. of course, i can’t prevent it coming up in readers’ comments, although i’ve tried to edit where i can. but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out those things, if you know where to click. call me paranoid, but it kind of leaves me feeling vulnerable. afterall, people have been able to pull tricks and scams, even without being armed with info that inadvertently gets divulged in this blog. how much more potential damage can be done, if someone were to purposefully use info in this blog for devious, evil agenda?

jadevine points out:

we know the warnings parents should give their children about online behavior, such as not giving out personal information and photos to people they don’t know. What makes blogging so different?

jan incognito and it doesn’t stop at you, in your own blog. i could, for example, have used jadevine’s real name, since i know her off-blog, anyway, and as some bloggers often point out, you can write anything in your own blog, right? but i recognize her preference to remain anonymous to the larger blogging public, even if it’s not explicitly indicated. do you think we put our children in danger by putting their photos and other bits of info about them online? afterall, we never know just where our photos end up. karen and marketman, for example are currently battling it out with the philippine inquirer about photos that have been stolen from their blogs (while it has been common for bloggers to nick photos from other traditional publications, how often would you encounter a national newspaper stealing from bloggers?). maybe jan should remain incognito?

how much personal information do you give out in your blogs? and when you post about other people, how much info do you divulge?

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