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[jlh]

I mean, is that what I will need to start posting in this journal? Or is Esperanto a better solution? Should I be paranoid about the search engines? Should I be locking all my posts? I reorganized this journal two years ago and started a personal one so that everything on here could be unlocked. I'm sure that if you knew me I would be recognizable here, but if you didn't, well, am I? Is it unwise to think that the few personal details that have been sprinkled around this journal add up to a lot of people?

And if I grow that paranoid should I really not have an LJ at all?

This isn't you know, some kind of existential mumblings, or a plea for whatever. I don't usually jump on the paranoia bandwagons, but there are people I respect talking about how they need to put dashes in their posts whenever they discuss something and you know, I discuss a lot of things.

So, o tech cognoscenti, should I only say Ver**onic**a M***ar**s?

ETA: A friend of this LJ, to whom I will not link as now I am all paranoid, posted today that a previous post about some tech work that their firm was doing showed up in a search for that technology in Tech*nocra*ti even though they have the "no spiders" option clicked on their info page. That is what I am responding to--should I be concerned about this anyway?

Comments

[phoenixsong]

Dear God, I hope not. I don't want to read ANYONE who posts like that.

Where are you hearing/seeing this?

[ali-wildgoose.livejournal.com]

Yikes! What brought this on? (asks the Queen of Unwise Lack of Paranoia :P )

[jlh.livejournal.com]

See above; I edited to add it in.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

See above; I edited to add it in.

[didi75.livejournal.com]

I just went on Google Blog Search, typed in VM, and got several LJ entries, along with other blog/journal posts on the subject. Nobody I know popped up, but you never know! It's a bit disconcerting.

If someone who actually knew me stumbled across my user info page, they would most likely discover very quickly that it was me. If they went onto my user pics page, they would figure it out even quicker. I should probably be more paranoid about this whole issue...

[sisterpandora.livejournal.com]

Paranoia can only get you so far, after that it's living in a box under a bridge in the park and talking to the aliens though a duct tape hat. ;D

...

With all the security issues LJ seems to be facing, both publicly and privately, I'm not sure what to believe. All I know is, I don't belive a damn thing coming out of the LJ or Six Apart Offices.

And now, to read your post about PR and then hit the shower.

[(Anonymous)]

When I search there for my own username (p*p!rk|) I find comments that I made to other people's entries, but not my own, which is similarly supposed to be blocking spiders. However, depending what I've got to say, I will henceforth be leaving comments as anonymous, and if my friends have anonymous commenting blocked, I just won't comment anymore as I don't really like my comments turning up all over hell like that.

I don't talk about work, my RL location, my RL name or anything else in my LJ. I do hope I don't have to stop posting altogether...

[phoenixsong]

Ah, it's the same old search engine problem that's been around about as long as the Internet and search engines.

Long story short, you can check the "no spiders" thing all you want, but some search engines have been deliberately written to ignore/disregard it. It's not a problem with LJ, I'm sure they're using the proper HTMl header tags (I know a paid Danga/6A employee and at least one volunteer, they're friends of lite's) -- respecting that tag depends on the search engine.

Google's caching system is another way around it -- if Google spidered the page before you turned on no spiders, it'll still have it in cache for a while. I don't know the half-life for that.

In short, this is why I don't have anything with my first or last name posted publicly, and asked lite way back when we started dating to not use more than my first name in a public post (especially since he does have his name in his profile). Mostly, I'm paranoid about one of my relatives becoming just savvy enough to drop my name into Google or Yahoo! and asking me about this LJ thing.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Well, that, yes; it's the nice thing about having a nickname. But there are those that don't want anything they've ever said turning up on a search engine (see the anon comment below), or don't want someone to search for something they've discussed and get their discussion. Which makes me wonder, should I be worried about that? Is there something about that situation that isn't good that I'm not thinking about?

[phoenixsong]

Well, there's sensible caution, there's healthy paranoia, and there's outright paranoia a la ely709's comment.

In the case of your friend who posted about work stuff publicly in the ETA, well, I think in general it's a bad idea to post work stuff publicly unless you're OK with it turning up somewhere, or unless you can make it very, very generalized. I don't even post a lot of details about work flocked; technicially, because there are people outside the U.S. on my flist and due to the nature of my job, I have to be worried about export agreement stuff, even though that mostly relates to internal business plans and the like and not so much my everyday job responsibilities.

As far as your posts, are you actually worried about what someone thinks of your opinion of television shows or movies? Are you concerned about someone finding out you read and/or write HP fanfic? Do you care if someone knows you have a nutty cat, used to work for a P.R. firm (I think), and left it to go back to school? Or are you more concerned that someone might link it back to you specifically, or be able to locate you?

I worry about my family finding my LJ, especially since I do have some actual pictures of myself as userpics. I also worry about work (whether it's my actual employer, or the organization we're contracted to) finding my LJ, which is why I rarely even post political stuff publicly anymore. They may be able to trace network traffic to livejournal.com back to my organization, or even my PC, but they can't access my actual entries without either my password, or looking at my browser cache -- and if they're looking that closely at my PC, I'm probably already in big trouble for doing something even more stupid than a little personal web browsing from work.

All this boils down to three questions:
1) Who are you worried about stumbling across this, regardless of who they think it is?
2) How likely is it someone will actually link it to you specifically, not just someone they know who happens to have a lot in common with you?
3) What are the possible consequences of someone actually making that connection? Are they just potentially awkward and require a lot of explaining to friends/family, or could they actually threaten your job or life?

In all seriousness, these are things that should be considered before anyone makes any sort of personal website, joins a mailing list, or posts to usenet or web-based bulletin boards. (Which, on a different but related subject, is why I think it's more important to educate people, especially kids, about this stuff and about secure passwords, instead of pretending "oh, MY kid isn't posting stuff on the internet!")

[phoenixsong]

In all seriousness, I'm not quite sure what it is you in particular are worried about. I hope this covers it, but if not, I'd probably need more specifics to address your concerns.

[phoenixsong]

When you search where? Which search engine? That's the part no one's saying.