Privacy

A few days ago Phantom Scribbler wrote a post about the scary fact that some people had found her blog by googling a photo of her daughter.

I think about this from time to time. Some bloggers use their full names and locations and post pictures with apparent abandon (like me). Others use pseudonyms and don't post any photos at all. Or they use their real first names but don't give out their location, or don't post photos of the people in their lives.

And I wonder if being as open as I am is wise. Is it fair to my children to post pictures of them on the internet, for all the world to see? It's not as if I have their permission. There is much talk about predators that stalk the internet, looking for kids to target. What if some weirdo saw a photo of me on my blog and tracked me to my home. Once you find my blog, I can bet it wouldn't be too difficult to figure out my last name, address, phone number etc.

On the other hand, I am under no illusion the stalkers would stumble onto my little tiny blog easily, nor do I think anyone would be bothered to stalk me or my family. I tend to not worry about things like this, to take an attitude of "it won't happen to me". But perhaps that is being naive.

I am considering opening a flickr account, because apparently you can have more privacy control there. But I don't know, I think maybe that's being a little paranoid.

A commenter left a suggestion on Phantom Scribbler's blog that I am taking under advisement too. Apparently if you add this code to your template no one can get to you via Google. And since I don't get any readers from google (or if I did, I would have no idea), that seems like a good trick to me. Anyone know--can I just add that code anywhere on my template?

So tell me what you think: why do you keep your identity secret, or not? Why do you post pictures, or not?