Protecting Yourself


Blogs, when open to the public, are often the intersection of several sets of potential pitfalls I've explored in previous chapters in this book. The specific advice in Chapters 4 through 7 on mitigating those risks should be applied to your own blogging activity. In addition to that advice, this section provides recommendations to help you blog more safely.

Don't Overreact

How do you advise your children if you feel they have placed themselves, your family, or their friends at risk? One of the most common reactions parents have when they read about abuses of people through public blogs is to want to stop their child from blogging altogether. While that is an optionand perhaps an appropriate option if a child is very youngfor most kids this is simply not practical, nor particularly helpful.

Kids can access the Internet and blog from their friends' computers and many cell phones today, and the ability to blog from commonly available devices will only increase. Instead of cutting them off from the tremendous opportunities blogging affords, you should focus on teaching them how to blog safely.

Find Out More

See Chapter 17 for information about how to start a dialog and create a family discussion guide.


Knowing How Information Adds Up

Most people (but far from all) are cautious about putting all their information in their blog profile. But what people don't realize is that the information they provide usually compounds over time. Here's an example of how this works:

David creates a blog and enters his city and state, first name, and age. He posts a few photos of himself with family and friends. That's a big chunk of personal information and introduces some risk, but he talked this over with his folks and they decided they were fine with it.

  • A friend comments on one of his photos and refers to David by his last name: "Hey M------ (I'm disguising the last name here, but his friend did not), great photo."

    A predator now has a full name, identifying photo, age, and city and state, and might well be able to use a white pages listing to pinpoint David as one of seven M------s living in Williamsburg, Virginia. In addition, because mapping technologies allow you to plot multiple locations on a map, the predator can begin tightening the web of location information to zero in on David's house.

  • David posts a blog talking about his science lab at school. He also notes that he is in a bad mood because he got dumped by Jacqueline. Though he deserved it, he still feels crummy.

    David has exposed an emotional vulnerability. Anyone scanning the blog knows David might be looking for a new girlfriend. An easy way to approach him is with a fake picture of a cute girl who thinks he's "wonderful." Rarely do boys resist providing access to their blog to a "cute girl" who is interested in them. Of course, it might not be David the predator is interested in; it could be his 6-year-old sister Sarah who is in his photo album, or his 9-year-old brother Adam, or both.

  • A second friend leaves a comment that he'll watch him in next Tuesday's game and meet him at the side gate after"Go Titans!"

    A quick Web search on high school football teams in Williamsburg provides David's school name so David can be easily located (a predator has the place, date, and time of the game and his photo). This information also corroborates that David's age and city information were accurately entered and not faked. The school location eliminates four of the last-named "M-----s" in town from the potential list because they live within other school districts. The search is now down to three likely houses.

  • In a blog entry the next day, David talks about going fishing in the river and tells Ben and Tom to meet him at the dock behind his house and gives driving directions.

    David is now locatable both at school and at home, and he's made his house a good target for theft. It's a safe bet his house will be empty during the ballgame because his folks will probably attend. A robber now has a great opportunity. David's picture and identity information could be used to create a phony passport or a fake ID.

Think About It

People who post on social networks would reduce their risks considerably if they didn't leave all their postings, photos, and other material out there forever. It is very easy to leak a few drops of information here and there into a large online bucket. That wouldn't be such a big deal if the bucket were emptied occasionally.


Taking Steps for Safety

The first step to protecting yourself and your family is to have a solid understanding of what kinds of information risks there are, how information might get exposed, and what you can do to mitigate or avoid the risks.

Think About It

There are several sites that blatantly push users into revealing a great deal of personal information about themselves publicly, telling them that nobody will visit their space unless they put interesting details in their profile or that posting their pictures will get more new friends to visit their blog. This is entirely irresponsible. Know the attitude toward safety and the privacy policy of any site before using it.


Beyond basic awareness, here's a checklist of advice to help make your blogging safer:

  • Make a conscious choice when setting up access to your blog. Most blog sites have several options, ranging from a personal journal that only you can see, to a site open to a defined group of friends and family, to a site available to a looser group of friends and their friends, all the way to a completely public site accessible to anyone in the world. Unfortunately, most sites default to a "publicly viewable" option, and you have to make an effort to look for the other options.

  • If you want to share your blog with a larger group that includes people who do not know you personally or make your blog public, consider archiving older material so there is no accumulation of information. Review your blog postings periodically with a view toward understanding how much information you have made available as content and comments begin to accumulate.

  • Choose a user name that is not suggestive or revealing. Your name should also not reveal your age, location, or gender.

  • Be careful what you divulge through text and don't be recognizable through your photos (see Figure 9-3 for an example of a photo that isn't too revealing). Also, be aware what you might give away in a photo label. All too often users place clearly identifying information in photo captions that give themselves and their friends or family away, such as "Nigel and Kate in Kingsbridge on Saturday." If you want to post identifying images, you should strongly consider more restricted access to your site.

    Figure 9-3. This blogger's photo doesn't show her appearance too clearly.

  • Monitor your friends' comments so you are not exposed through them. The example shown in Figure 9-4 reveals how quickly friends' comments expose others. In this example, these three friends completely exposed the blog owner and themselves.

    Figure 9-4. Taken together, all this information reveals a lot about these kids and the blog's owner.

  • Encourage your children to come to you if somebody who comments on their blog makes them feel uncomfortable in any waywhether that person is a friend, a family member, or a stranger.

  • Be cautious about what you include in your profile and recognize that some blog and social networking sites make your profile contents publicly available and searchable, even if your blog itself is private.

  • Make sure the blogging site you use has clear privacy and security policies, provides tools for protection, and is responsive to reports of abuse.

  • According to international ethnography research as well as industry research, for many teens, more buddies equals increased social status. Don't add people you don't know to a buddy list if you are sharing personal information, and don't include people on your buddy list unless you feel comfortable about who they are. Remember: If you don't recognize the buddy name and the person has not requested contact with you in your comments area, the comment is quite likely spam.

  • Don't play blog exposé. To get repeat attention teens will often get more and more risqué in their content and pictures. The potential for harm even within extended friend and family groups increases as the site gets racier and more personal.

  • Finally, talk to your family and your friends. Everyone you interact with online needs to work together if you are to help each other learn your way around this new online world.

Think About It

Often people feel safer about receiving comments from and responding to somebody who lives far away, assuming they can't get at them. Keep in mind, however, that people can say they are located anywhere they want. They might live exactly where they claim to live, or they might live much, much closer.


Be Aware of What Your Friends Are Saying About You

One final point to keep in mind is that you are not the only one putting your information online through blogs. Your risk level is based on what your collective group is saying about you, not just what you say. It's vital that you share the cautions contained in this book with your friends and family and be aware of what they are putting online.

Here are the key steps for working with your family and friends to keep all of you safe:

  • Posting photos of others, or text that provides information about others in any way, without their knowledge and permission is disrespectful and might well be illegal. It isn't okay to provide a friend's last name, their birthday, or where you're going to meet them, unless both parties agree that they want that information posted. This shows disrespect for their right to choose the level of exposure they are comfortable with. You should not only ask permission, but you should also make it clear who can see your site. In the case of minors, you might need to get their parents' permission.

  • Discuss your comfort level with sharing information that locates you. If your social networking site is conservative and doesn't provide personal information that would help locate you but your friend's site does, then your information is still public. Take the time to browse through a couple of your friends' blogs to see what they say about you. If a friend tells what school they attend and there is a comment that you two have a class together, a suggestion to meet out front after school, or a remark about a favorite teacher, it doesn't matter that you didn't provide your school information. Your friend just did it for you.

  • Keep in mind that "friends" can be a very fluid concept. Both you and your friends will meet new people and shift friendships throughout your lives. At some point you might just drift away (jobs change, schools change, interests change), or you might experience a rift that suddenly breaks the friendship. How will your information be treated then? Occasionally you should review who has access to your site and make changes if necessary.

  • You might have two friends who don't like each other. You don't want your blog to become the middle ground in a battle between your friends. Perhaps they've had a falling out or perhaps they never liked each other. What agreements are you making with each of them that will provide the level of safety the other needs?

  • Permissions can change. Either you or a friend might, at a later date (even tomorrow), decide to change the permissions on your sites. How will your/their information be treated if the permissions on their site become public? Will your information be removed or archived? Will it be maintained in a section that is only for limited viewers (where some information is viewable by the public and some is set to private)? Or will your information get the same level of exposure as the rest of the site and suddenly become much more public than you had intended?

  • If you want your blog to be a social networking site, keep in mind that your level of safety from exposure is only as strong as the weakest link in your social network chain. Even if you and your friends have agreed about avoiding exposure, you probably don't have such an agreement with all of their friends. Although you might ask your friend not to tell people what school you go to, if your friend posts a comment about his school and mentions your name, a predator can assume it's pretty likely that you all go to the same school. There is a potential for information to leak several tiers out in the network and eventually identify you.

As you apply the age-old social network infrastructure to your new virtual world, you have to be careful to look both ways and consider all the potential hazards to be able to get around safely.



Look Both Ways. Help Protect Your Family on the Internet
Look Both Ways: Help Protect Your Family on the Internet
ISBN: 0735623473
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 157
Authors: Linda Criddle

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