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Every blogger has at one time or another been faced with a fundamental quandary: How much personal information is too much?
Keep in mind that it is actually quite difficult to remain completely anonymous online. You can use services such as a domain registry anonymizer that keeps your physical address and identity quiet[1] or use proxy server software such as Tor to mask your IP address. But none of those things will help you if you describe your workplace or family in any detail.
Sooner or later, you are going to want to write about your job. You’ll find yourself paralyzed by trying to determine how to talk about your employer, supervisor, or other cubicle monkey without risking a trip to the unemployment line.
What about your relationships with a spouse, significant other, or family member? You’ll badly want to write about that sister-in-law that makes you homicidal, or the arrogant uncle that ruined your wedding. How can you express yourself without ending up in divorce court?
Here are a few suggestions for staying mysteriously behind the curtain:
- Use an ‘anonymous’ (free) email account as your primary blogging contact address. Hotmail has fallen out of fashion in recent years, but Yahoo and Google Mail accounts are still quite popular. Make sure when you sign up you use a pseudonym, it won’t do you any good to put your real name in your Yahoo profile.
- Use an ‘anonymous’ blogging service. While Blogger used to be the gold standard, recent “upgrades” and changes to the service have sent many bloggers looking for a better alternative. I suggest setting up an account at Wordpress.com. This will make things easier to transfer to your own wordpress-fueled domain in the future.
- Change names to protect the not-so-innocent, including your own. Be careful with this one though, once you pick a name for a ‘character’ on your blog, you will have to stick with it to keep your readers from becoming confused. The guy you call Jeff today can not be called Derrick tomorrow if the stories are related.
- Change location. This is probably not as important if you live in a big city, like New York, San Francisco, or Los Angeles, but is vitally important if there are only 1000 people in your town. Be vague in your descriptions of your neighborhood.
- Keep some things to yourself. You want to write about the great meal you had out on the town, shopped at a unique store or witnessed a news-worthy event? Don’t give away details that will give away your location, almost everything is search able on Google.
- Be vague about your work. Employers are getting savvy about monitoring references to their businesses online. Saying you work for Bank of America, Petco, or the University of California can get you into some big trouble. Identifying information such as, “the largest US cellular phone network,” or “the most recognized online auction site” is just as dangerous. You would be surprised at how many people forget this.
- Edit your photos. I can not get over the number of times I have read an “anonymous” blog only to find a flickr album full of pictures of the author, their spouse, pets, and children proudly displayed in the sidebar. Be creative, show only close ups of your eye, ear, or mouth; pixelate your face or other identifying marks. If you hope to use your blog as a way to share photos with your friends and family, you should probably reconsider trying to remain hidden.
- Be vigilant. The moment you push the ‘publish’ button, your post hits the net with frightening speed. If you discover later that you’ve mistakenly written something identifying, you can edit the post, but your RSS feed has already entered the blog-o-sphere. It takes only a split second to completely undo months or even years of anonymity.
It seems like a daunting task, doesn’t it? Don’t worry, if you follow these simple steps you can talk about your awful boss with relatively little risk.
[1] A popular anonymous domain registry provider recently “inadvertently” published subscriber information. Another provider recently coughed up subscriber information when threatened with a court order.
Did I leave anything out? Are there ways you’ve discovered that make anonymity easier? I’d love to hear from you.
I agree it is prety hard to hide yourself and some certain aspects of ones self on the Internet. But I would say that those writing on the Internet, particularly on Blogs, don’t usually want to be all that *hidden* ? Good article.
Carl - You wouldn’t think that someone who has decided to talk about their life in an online forum would want to be hidden, but count how many times you come across a blog where the author is weighing the pros and cons of talking about something they consider ’sensitive.’ I’m betting you will see MANY.
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