<p>People on this site often post their state and national awards, national rankings in sports, high school they attend, etc. In many cases this would make the poster identifiable to someone willing to do a bit of research; in other cases a poster’s identity is immediately recognizable to someone within the posters academic, EC, athletic or other sphere.</p>
<p>How important is it to protect one’s identity on this site?</p>
<p>I would say that it is an individual thing. We all have a problem when posters provide too few specifics so as to make their information almost meaningless. I like to provide probably more detail than most because I want to be as much help to others here as I can possibly be. If someone was curious about my identity they could probably take the time to figure it out. But big deal.</p>
<p>I have identified a few posters here and have even gone so far as to PM them. However I would never provide this info to any other person. BTW, these posters have rendered all of us here a great service because of the specificity of their information.</p>
<p>For the most part, yes, if you were to do research, you probably could identify at least some of the posters. But I really don’t see a huge problem with that. If someone does manage to identify person x as screenname x, what can they do? You know that person x got a perfect SAT, was president of several school organizations, is applying to schools y and z, etc. Big deal.</p>
<p>I don’t really see the importance…well…of course…u shudn’t give ur dob, or ssn (now if u do that already…tell the admin to delete that post!)…there’s little chance of ID theft…i don’t think the thieves will be lingering around in CC to hack some school and college children’s “rich” bank accounts! :D</p>
<p>One thing’s for sure, they won’t be trying to hack this parent’s bank account after April. It’ll already have been hacked by one college or another.</p>
<p>LOL, hv. </p>
<p>I agree with o’loog . Some of us have lived “outloud” and opened ourselves up pretty good. Some of us have been shot in the rear for it , too but all in all it’s the personal details that make this site great for folks a year or two behind.</p>
<p>I’ve wondered about this. Our school is so small that anyone associated will know who I am. </p>
<p>I try to be civil in my posts, and now that a particular school staff person has moved, I am not prone to the fury that overtook me last year…</p>
<p>S is also at a small college, so I try to keep his anonymity.</p>
<p>When I first started on these boards, I recognised one of DDs good friends, between knowing the kid well enough to recognise the unusual screen name reference and a couple of postings that easily IDed our small HS.</p>
<p>My main concern then was to avoid being recognised back and making us both uncomfortable. I took a week off and was pretty careful what I posted for a while. </p>
<p>I am sure if some one took tidbits from my past postings and put them together they could find at least one of my kids, based on the school and the sport, but it seems like most people are here to learn and have fun and not for nefarious purposes ;)</p>
<p>Some of my concern is the privacy of my S, D, and H. I try not to share enough on public forum to be identifiable, but frequently in a PM, I will say more.</p>
<p>I became identifiable and even though I didn’t share anything that was particularly private, my son wasn’t thrilled. I decided that the benefits to others and to ME were greater if I was pretty transparent. It can bite you in the @ss, as Cur pointed out.</p>
<p>I’m quite sure that if someone “connected the dots” they could figure out who I am and who my kids are. You know…there is nothing I’ve posted here that is confidential information. Like Lorelei, if there is something more personal, I’m more likely to put it in a PM or email. And…lucky for me, I’ve actually met a few of you!!!</p>
<p>After the meet-up in NYC a bunch of posters know who I am. That’s okay. Since my phone number is unlisted and my last name is different from my kids or my husband’s it would still take some sleuthing to connect all the dots. I’ve figured out the real names of a very few posters - Curmudgeon’s happens to be one of them - though I’ve forgotten what it was already.</p>
<p>It depends what we put online as to how important anonymity is. If I were looking for parental input on a discipline problem with my kids, or an issue my kids were having, then it would be bad if I were identifiable. I wrote a lot about my son’s college search, then he ended up living on a floor in his dorm with 2 other CC’rs so that probably wasn’t so good on my part. He should have been able to go to college with a clean slate. So now I’m a bit more discrete.</p>
<p>My son is not too happy that I’ve posted anything related to him so I try to avoid his details now, although he could be narrowed down to a hundred or so kids at his college already (actually less, since I said “he”). And anything much more about high school would definitely identify him if anyone local is on CC. So my bragging on him, not to mention my own personal life, now has to be more generic and less specific. I’d rather he not become identifiable for his own sake. I did some pm’ing early in his freshman year and starting it again.</p>
<p>Whoever is spying on a student really needs something else better to do.</p>
<p>Alright, but college admiss people come by here too a lot, and probably lurk around quietly as well. Say, they see students stats they recognize, esp our regional officers and might look up our nick once in a while here during the admission process on how the student is going on, and @#^% !!!
I have dug my own grave deeper n deeper if that is the case (:. We post sth small to start, and people keep asking and we keep answering…and the cycle is disastrous the very least. It is like CC brings the craziness in us!
One idea is CC can stop linking our nick to our past posts but CC would not do tht will they :).</p>
<p>^^^You’re a student, SkyGirl, so you’re making your own decisions about what and what not to disclose. That’s different from parent posters, who need to respect their non-posting kids’ preferences about disclosing personal information on the public boards. (PMs may be a different matter.)</p>
<p>And the ability to gather information from past posts is a big piece of what makes CC such a valuable resource. So you do have to be circumspect in posting personal information you may later regret disclosing.</p>
<p>In some of the acceptance/rejection threads I recognized a number of kids from my school. Like one of the other parents here, I stayed pretty quiet for a bit. Kids need to be able to vent. I also kept anything I figured out from putting the dots together to myself.
These forums are supposed to be anonymous. I don’t post anything that I would really mind becoming public, because I realize that that could happen. But I respect the anonymity of others, even when they do everything but draw an arrow to their homeroom :-)</p>
<p>Until my son is safely enrolled in his grad school “mum’s” the word since I’m not sure how many placements are offered and it’s not known as an engineering school hotbed so it may give it away…i’m a bit paranoid ;)</p>
<p>WJB - I agree wholeheartedly. I would not appreciate my daughter giving information about me on a site that might be recognizable by my co-workers. </p>
<p>Last year I changed my screen name because I realized that kids at her hs would easily figure out who she was because of some distinctive activities, where she was applying to school, her scores, etc. I don’t think someone who doesn’t already know your child could identify them - it is more a matter of recognizing someone in your hometown, high school or perhaps small college. I know I spotted two of my DD’s classmates. </p>
<p>I also think it is important if you have chosen to give enough information that your child can be recognized by other parents NOT to make comments about other students or friends your child has. </p>
<p>Overall, I think the posters here are very careful and respectful. On the other hand, the whole juicy campus thing is pretty troubling.</p>