<p>Blogs (on-line diaries) are very popular with the 25 and under crowd. The below article is something to pass onto your kids, who probably don’t realize that even if they post under assumed names, their blogs can hurt them.</p>
<p>"Under the pseudonym of Sarcastic Journalist, Rachel Mosteller wrote this entry on her personal Web log one day last April: </p>
<p>t"I really hate my place of employment. Seriously. Okay, first off. They have these stupid little awards that are supposed to boost company morale. So you go and do something ‘spectacular’ (most likely, you’re doing your JOB) and then someone says ‘Why golly, that was spectacular.’ then they sign your name on some paper, they bring you chocolate and some balloons.</p>
<p>“Okay two people in the newsroom just got it. FOR DOING THEIR JOB.” </p>
<p>The day after that posting, she was fired. …"</p>
<p>This article seems like it should be more of a warning to parents than kids. While it’s true that kids should realize that whatever they post on a blog, or a message board, or through email, is able to be seen and identifiable, adults should realize that, too. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard, or known, of adults who have written emails which contained work-related information of a confidential or inflammatory nature, and then they’re surprised when it becomes ‘public’. All one needs to do is read the news in the past five years about corporate American to know that you should never say/write anything on the internet that you wouldn’t want anyone and everyone to see.</p>
<p>username on this discussion group. The two previous posters yielded multiple hits. Googling mine cracks me up. No, the divorcenet and scrabblenet kydads aren’t me Happily married to a loving spouse (same one forever) and my scrabble skills are so poor that I’d be ashamed to post anything about them.</p>
<p>Googling my other main username,(real name run together, used on several recreational sites) yields three pages of hits on diving and astronomy sites.</p>
<p>I’ve noticed many users here have links to web pages. Easy to find who owns an IP if the page is hosted. Nothing on the Internet is truly anonymous or really goes away if it it’s indexed or archived (ask Oliver North about that one).</p>
<p>Two funny asides. In the mid 90’s I taught Internet classes (remember text only browsers? So few sites you could remember most of them?) and demonstrated how one’s name could be called up on a search. The then head of academic computing had the same name as a recently caught serial killer and was in a workshop (the academic computing person, that is). I demonstrated excite.com using her name. Surprise, surprise.</p>
<p>Second case, I demonstrated bitnet and usenet newsgroup archiving to a group of department heads here, early 90’s. One asked me if the archives ever “went away” So far as I know they really don’t. One of his faculty had made some very injudicious remarks in a scholarly newsgroup; the chair was wondering if the dean would find it during the faculty member’s tenure review. The dean didn’t, faculty member still here. :-)</p>
<p>Well, if she hated her job it’s a good thing she got fired, right?
Also, it is not entirely clear, but it appears she was doing her blogging at work.
I recently was warned not to do any posting at work. Surfing, lurking is ok (to a certain extent) but posting became very risky after a colleague got pulled into a meeting with 2 layers of management and HR afte he posted on a forum, and the thread contained objectionable language that was not posted by him!! Big brother is definitely watching!! Another reason why I choose to remain as anonymous as possible on these forums (forumae? forumses?) :)</p>
<p>Some of the things that college kids post on livejournal.com are pretty scary. I’ve seen cases of kids posting their dorm and room number on the college live journals - it wouldn’t take much for someone to find them. I am also amazed at some of the personal information about their lives they put online - So, a warning to be discreet is a good idea.</p>
<p>KYdad - beat you by several years (the late 80s), and well do I remember the pre- web days of Unix commands and text browsers, but you should still know that you can “anonymize” your website for a small fee (at least it’s that way if it is registered with Network Solutions).</p>
<p>I’m not familiar with livejournal and my children are not in college yet, but I’m sure this statement is on the money – based on what HS kids (and younger!) are already disclosing on their “xanga’s”. Scary trend indeed!</p>
<p>I just googled some of the handles on here and cam up with this very odd link to another site about admissions…one I’ve never heard of with a terrible bulletin system…but the discussion was about SoozieVT, NSM, TheDad, Xiggi and other CC posters…but students were posting. </p>
<hr>
<p>Date: April 2nd, 2004 7:38 PM
Author: not4nothing</p>
<p>me and thedad are tight. northstarmom could beat your a** in 4 seconds!</p>
<hr>
<p>Date: April 2nd, 2004 7:39 PM
Author: rachmiel of padan-aram</p>
<p>Beat my a**? Bring them over here.</p>
<hr>
<p>Date: April 2nd, 2004 7:48 PM
Author: not4nothing</p>
<p>Actually, Id just get Sooviet over here, and her 3 D’s with their alpine skis could run your a** over like a ******* machine gone wrong! HTH</p>
<hr>
<p>Date: April 2nd, 2004 7:50 PM
Author: rachmiel of padan-aram</p>
<p>Momsdream,
that site was started by kids - HS and College - after the Princeton Review bulletin board made a big change a couple of years ago. Can you tell it’s not moderated? pretty wild, eh?</p>
<p>I stopped posting some information when I realized how easily it could be googled - like my school or majors undergrad - that combination comes up quickly. Eeek!</p>
<p>have you guys seen the movie Hitch? It’s with Will Smith - just came out. At the beginning, someone asks something and he’s like oh, i googled her. then later, another girl was like, this guys legit - i googled him. (those arent the exact lines, but its similar)… I found it kind of frightening, because it’s true. You can google your name/username and find all sorts of things. I use a different username on each place that I post at.</p>
<p>I heard at least 4 years ago that googling potential dates was the typical practice in NYC. I am not surprised that it has spread elsewhere. I also know people in the NE who also check public information web sites to find out all sorts of info about potential dates. One young woman whom I know, for instance, learned that a man who was wooing her was lying about his property. He had been bragging about owning all sorts of property, but when she checked the records, the property he owned – including his own house – was owned by his mother.</p>
<p>I recently googled my real name and got a hit. Funny thing is that if I google with my name only, I get so many hits that I don’t see any related to me…as others have the same name. But, when I google my name with my company’s name - there’s a hit for me. Everyone should try to google their name in several different contexts.</p>
<p>A student I know googled her college interviewer, who had a quite unusual name. </p>
<p>About a dozen references came up. All but one clearly referred to this person from what we could tell from the occupational and location references. </p>
<p>There was one rather strange one she wasn’t sure about.</p>
<p>The one reference we weren’t sure of was contained in a listing of credits for one of the Happy Hooker movies made back in the 70s. </p>
<p>The interviewer was the right age to have been an actress back then, but it sure didn’t fit with her subsequent life style. </p>
<p>The student was somewhat disconcerted and distracted at the thought that ithis nformation might be floating around in her head at the interview…until she looked very carefully at the credit list and realized that the name was actually the name of a CHARACTER in the movie, not the actress playing the character. So she was able to relax and realize that this credit had nothing to do with her interviewer after all.</p>
<p>A few years back my son found himself talking with a young woman about four years older than him (he was wearing one of his astronomy t-shirts and she started the conversation). When he googled her, he found a lot of astronomy references–she’d done some very interesting stuff for her UG thesis–and he also found a picture of her in minimal clothing. Turned out it was a publicity shot for a Playboy article on girls from her college (and others) (for which she’d posed). She’d made quite a lot of money for the shot–but it horrified my son. “How will I ever look her in the eye again? It’s EMBARASSING.” Not a blog, but testimony to the new way in which Google means that nothing you ever did goes away. (I’m really hoping that picture of me in 1974 never makes it onto the web.)</p>
Happily married to a loving spouse (same one forever) and my scrabble skills are so poor that I’d be ashamed to post anything about them.</p>