“There is nothing to fear but fear itself.”

That Roosevelt was a smart man. It doesn’t matter whether you record your thoughts in a paper journal, on napkins at restaurants, or in a blog. The fact remains that your little secrets are always there to find. Digital just adds another dimension.

There is no such thing as privacy. Just get a divorce, and you’ll find that out.

:D

As for online identity, my primary line of defence is to periodically Google myself.

- me.

He pretends to be said annoying kid to a friend he knows, finds out a hell of a lot more info, and pretty soon my friend G knows the kid’s home address, real name, school he goes to, name of his cat, parents’ names… all that lovely private info you don’t want a random stranger to know.

And then armed with all this personal info about this kid, G contacts him from a different account, just to freak him out.

“Hey, how’s your cat doing? What’s her name again? Sandy? Right, right… you’re still living on such and such address, correct? Hey, that’s not too far from where I live! I could come to your house sometime!”

So on and so on. Basically, my friend gave this kid a moral lesson about not to start shit with random people on the internet, before blocking him, and posting the tale of revenge on his own blog.

That, more than anything else, awoke me to the dangers of leaving personal info online. Admittedly since I’ve been hanging about since I was thirteen, I could have probably been a lot more careful. Now I don’t know how easily I can be traced down. G’s antics awoke me to what could happen if someone wanted to track me down, for whatever reason.

Just goes to show how dangerous such an output of information can be for you in the long term. You never know who’s going to start taking an interest in your private life.

-Rainspirit