What does your blog tell strangers? Someone on Blogger help group today asked how personal should one get on their blog. The question asked was : “Is it safe to use real names, ages, work locations, etc or better to make up names with regards to family.”
This got me thinking. When is a blog too personal? Perhaps this is a topic worth exploring more. People are putting a lot of really personal information online. Many blogs openly post first and last names of family members, jobs, city they live in, restaurants they eat at, cars they drive, and even the full names of their children.
You may have already noticed that I don’t use my children’s real names on my blog. I don’t think one should post their children’s name, place of work or school on their blog. Posting photos of your children online is not something that I recommend doing either. I shared a more in depth opinion on this back in February. Do read my post: Is Posting Children’s Pictures Online Dangerous?
Many people will have a different perspective on this. Some people believe it is perfectly save to share their children’s photos on their blog. If you do share photos of your children online I’m not judging you, but I do ask you to reconsider.
You have to remember that anyone can and most likely will be reading your blog entries. Not all strangers online are good citizens.
You should never share your social security number – your phone numbers and your home address on your blog either. Did you know that your personal information, such as your home phone number and address may be listed on the internet already? If it is listed in Google, Yahoo or any other online phone book you may wish to have it removed.
Also if you are employed by a company you might want to ask yourself if the things that you are sharing on your personal blog ultimately hurting your career. Will you receive ridicule from family from things you share on your blog and can you handle that?
With regards to blogging you really need to ask yourself how much information is too much.
Research done by Sophos, a Boston-based Internet security company, revealed that 41% of Facebook users will divulge personal information – such as email address, date of birth and phone number – to a complete stranger, greatly increasing their susceptibility to identity theft.
What do you think? Is blogging dangerous for our privacy? Are we sharing too much? What information do you consider too much or too personal to share on your blog, and how did you come to make this decision?
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15 responses so far ↓
Wrote: Oct 18, 2007 at 12:13 am
I don’t share the names of my family members on my blog. My wife is, of course, Mrs. EDog and my kids are the EDoglings. I have a PO Box on my website for professional correspondence. I only include my professional email address and no phone number. I have one of my instant messenger IDs available if someone wants to chat with me, but I’ve never had someone not a regular reader message me out of the blue.
Considering that I use my blog as a professional tool to further my writing career, I think I do a pretty good job of keeping my private life private and only sharing what I want to.
Ian
Wrote: Oct 18, 2007 at 12:57 am
It has to be a reasonable balance based on considered choices.
Until fairly recently, I was just “Mike in Arkansas” in my blog and on-line comments.
While I now use my real name (or is it?), I don’t identify where I live or my phone number, though I’m sure that information is available, though it’s probably not up to date any more.
Why use my real name? If I remember right, I decided to after reading a post on Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger blog that had to do with the question of how credible is someone trying to make money on a blog when that person is not willing to use their real name.
Now, I’m not under any illusions that I’m going to make a lot of money from my blogs, but that just kind of made sense to me – for me.
But I’ve always been a kind of laid back guy. I’m not going to publish much of anything that’s going to get anyone riled up at me.
I do think it’s important to protect the kids and make sure that they understand that there are some very dangerous people out there and that their information should be protected. I’m just glad that our kids were grown before the internet really was much more than an idea of some geek scientists.
Wrote: Oct 18, 2007 at 3:18 am
Yup. I definately would not post any child’s name or photo on a blog, nor my girlfriend (although she has a personal profile).
Personal data is considered “sensitive” on the web. It can definately be very dangerous if it got into the wrong hands.
Wrote: Oct 18, 2007 at 6:35 am
I won’t share details of my friends and family members online. If I would blog about them, I will just use an anonymous name and won’t go deeper on who actually they are.
For once I disclosed my address and phone numbers in Facebook and Friendster but I quickly withdrawn because I got some scam calls from some China girls and some sort.
Wrote: Oct 18, 2007 at 7:59 am
Back when I had five regular readers (most family) I posted under my real name and shared pictures on a regular basis. When my readership grew and I got serious about my writing career, I got a url using my pseudonym. I rarely post about my kids, but when I do, I use their real names. Maybe I should quit that.
Wrote: Oct 18, 2007 at 8:34 am
This is something I have thought about before given that I have a site with my name as the domain. But I haven’t disclosed the names of my wife or children nor have I put their pictures on my blog.
It might be something I would reconsider if I were starting over but so far I haven’t experienced any problems as a result.
Wrote: Oct 18, 2007 at 9:47 am
I believe a very healthy dose of common sense is necessary when posting. Sometimes it requires restraint, but you never know who is lurking in the cyber bushes.
Wrote: Oct 19, 2007 at 12:46 am
Well, as you can tell by my name (or maybe not) I don’t use my real name. And I think it’s a bad idea to post any identifying information, especially with regards to children.
Wrote: Oct 19, 2007 at 8:47 am
Rose, I think this is sound advise. I don’t mention my children’s names either, nor our address, etc.
Great post!
Wrote: Oct 19, 2007 at 12:25 pm
Here’s a twist on the topic:
My boss and I decided it would be best to keep total anonymity on our blog because of possibility of being sued by our customers or vendors for what we’re planning to say. One post already was about an experience with having goods made in China. It was a terrible liability and PR nightmare for the company (our customer). They hushed it up fairly well, though.
Wrote: Oct 19, 2007 at 1:49 pm
This makes for a very important point about blogging.
Wrote: Oct 19, 2007 at 11:13 pm
Work and family personal stuff is something I try not to post on, there have been cases where people have actually lost their jobs because of negative comments about their employers, one just has to look at the legal problems facebook is running into with privacy issues.
Wrote: Oct 20, 2007 at 8:43 am
I certainly agree that putting up personal information is just asking for trouble.
The problem is not limited to the Internet. While working Part-Time at a college, one assignment at a Computer Literacy class was to do a short biography of oneself. Sure enough every one was placing their SSN on the cover sheet and within the assignment you could find their full name, address, birthdate and birthplace. Wow, candy for a thief. Just dig through the trash can to find discarded assignments and you’re in business.
You cannot rely on common sense. Not everyone has that built in. Education and training are the building blocks that are needed.
Wrote: Oct 22, 2007 at 7:10 am
I avoid posting the names or pictures of my family on my site. At the most, I give my first name and a photo, but that’s it.
Gregg Oconnell covered a very interesting story about a guy who lost his government job because of his blog.
http://greggoconnell.com/2007/08/23/reporter-threatens-bloggers-lively-hood/
Wrote: Oct 22, 2007 at 11:28 pm
I agree personal information about where you live, childrens names, social security numbers should never be shared