Privacy & Me

I suspect everybody who ventures online wonders the same thing: just how connected do I want to be, anyway?

There are news stories about colleges using Facebook to investigate parties with underage drinking (oh, the horror!). There are news stories about employees getting fired when they blog inappropriately (try to get six people to agree on a definition of "inappropriate." Just try.). And I work for a search engine, so I'm fundamentally aware that if it's out there & it's a public page, it might get, well, found. That's what search engines do.

So what does that mean for my little collection of blogs, for linking to my friends' blogs, for creating a profile for myself? I'm not exactly paranoid, and no, I don't expect "the Government" to show up at my house because I'm interested in cooking and tech and travel. I don't expect any concrete negative consequences at all, in fact. But some vague & nameless concern nags at me anyway. Once the info's out there, I don't control where it goes or how it's interpreted, even though I created it. If you find my friends & my interests, you find me. . . .

Then again, I'm writing a cooking blog - and there's really not much point if no one finds it, or if I anonymize it so far that it puts everyone to sleep.

Oh well. In the short term, I'm just grateful that there's some grad student in Arizona who's got the same name I do. She's a geologist, and she's published so many articles that if you search for me, you find nothing but pages & pages of her. Clearly, rocks rock. (Yes, Mom, the pun is for you).