Blogging Safety Tips

I’ve had a lot of thoughts lately about blogging and have decided to compile them and provide a bit of a safety tip list that I wanted to share with you. Unfortunately a lot of you are breaking some of these tips, and haphazardly putting yourselves and your family at potential risk. I am not pointing any fingers here, I utterly enjoy reading all of your blogs, however I just want you to all be safe. Granted I know that if someone is serious about stalking you they have a million ways at their fingertips to do so, but let’s not give them another one.

A friend of mine recently had some issues with certain pictures of her daughters being repeatedly viewed by numerous strangers. I followed her suggestion to use a different tracker (the annoying one some of you complained about) for about a week to see exactly who was viewing what. I was surprised and disgusted that two of my posts in particular were being viewed quite often and the link was from a sex site that I would need a password to access. I quickly deleted the posts and watched as my traffic thankfully decreased. So it was with these thoughts and this experience that I post my personal list of blogging safety tips. Note that I would love you to add to these, as this list is by no means comprehensive.

*Keep your calendar at home. Don’t announce to the internet netherworld that you hit the gym every day at 6am, take your kids to the nearby park every day at 2pm, or that you will be leaving town and going on vacation to Disney on April 21st to the 28th. (I’m not by the way, but I sort of wish I were!) Not only will somebody who is not your friend know where you are, but they will know where you aren’t… that your home is empty.

*Personal information is personal. At your discretion, don’t post personal information. Names (especially last names), addresses, phone numbers, school’s names, employment information, last names of friends or relatives (in your posts or links), ages are iffy, and birthdates are a must not. (I know, I’ve broken a lot of these “tips” too!)

*Watch your pictures. Never post provocative pictures. Remember that what is cute, adorable or funny to you may be provocative for a pedophile. It only takes one of them to view it and then pass it on to others. Naked baby photos, bath time fun photos, even children in dress-up costumes…if you have pictures like this that you want to share with friends and family, you may have to go back to the old fashioned email or snail mail, or start a private family blog… online is permanent and anyone on the internet can save a picture or post to their computer or even print it out. Look over your pictures before you post them to make sure that none of the personal information you are making sure not to write is in the background or foreground of your pictures. Those first day of school pictures in front of the school give a lot of information you may not want passed out to anyone. This past winter my two eldest went around and shoveled the walks of everyone on our cul-de-sac of their very own accord. I was thrilled and as a proud mama took lots of pics to post for you… but then I realized that you would easily see where I live, that the numbers on the houses were easy to read and well, those of you who I want to know where I live do or can, but those I don’t, won’t. One of the pictures that was being accessed and viewed by a sex site was of my three year old son wearing a leotard and being a little ballerina. So sad, but it is up to us to use more discretion than necessary if we want to keep our blogs public.

*Be nice and only mostly honest. Most of you are, but do remember that while you do have freedom of speech, some people are crazy and may take offence and then get defensive and then you may have a whole other problem on your hands. Read this to get what I’m talking about. You don’t want to be slandering your mother-in-law online… because, really, what do you ever have to complain about :) I also worry about employers, or potential employers. Mr. Man mentioned that several employers are going on facebook and all those other modern online conveniences and reading everything a potential employee has ever written. So be careful. Writing that you called in sick to work to spend a day having fun may not be the best thing for your future employer to read. This one is a tricky one and I don’t have much to say on it, but I think it’s important to consider the person you are portraying and not just what you are putting out there, but whom. Also, something I've learned is to be careful what your titles are... those are what people will search to. I'm not too worried about those coming who googled, "chore charts", but I am wary of the "skinny dipping" ones!

Here’s another link to some helpful tips.

I went over some of these tips with a friend of mine this morning and then went on to tell her everything I thought she should take off her blog in order to be safe. I didn’t want to offend, but in the end she was more than grateful and almost barged into my house to do it immediately! She suggested we set up a sort of watchdog system… as friends we should help each other out and let each other know when we think they’ve violated the safety tips or just given too much information. I would definitely appreciate such comments. The safety kid in me notices these things so easily now. I’m not trying to scare you, just alert you and remind you. Happy, safe blogging!