Private information in the public domain

latetoschool
Wed, 30 May 2007 18:16:45 +0000

Allmusic, someone did actually “out” my city location, some time ago. Therefore, to save them the trouble, I immediately started listing my cities in my profile. I am cautious of my daughter’s information, because that “belongs” to her, but, I don’t really care about my own information. A few posters here have my real name, email address, telephone numbers, even Skype contact info. I don’t have anything to hide, never post anything that I care if it shows up on the front page of USA today etc., and I am not afraid of anything such as stalkers, etc.

Having said that, I’m not interested in simply broadcasting contact info - a few people have approached me in PM asking for advise or wishing to take dialog into email, usually about business matters, etc., and, I declined because I wasn’t really all that interested and I didn’t “trust” them in terms of wanting to spend more time on their issues or get to know them better, or at least not to the degree I like and trust the people who have my real information.

Bottom line, anything done electronically can be traced and tied back to the original author, etc., and I consider nothing to be truly anonymous, ever.

One thing about this site - it’s fairly self-selecting. For example, on most accessible forums, one could always ask “how do I know this person who appears to be a mother of two in college isn’t really a 60 year old sociopathic male with a criminal record and no children let alone any in college”, but, over time, it’s clear that people really are who they represent themselves to be - it would be impossible (I think) for example, for CGM, or Berurah, or Calmom etc. to “pretend” to be someone they really are not, and to continue to stay in character over hundreds of posts over time. Or at least that’s my completely uneducated, unscientific assessment.