2013-07-14 23:28:00
As a follow-up to my previous post on common sense I'd like to touch on Internet privacy.
A few months ago I decided it was time to clean up my presence in social media. Using various plugins and a with a lot of patience I managed to clear out every post I had ever made to Facebook, Google Plus and Reddit. This decission followed after one-too-many privacy changes on Facebook and the realization that despite my best intentions I was still sharing a lot of information. I now regularly go over all of my social profiles to ensure nothing is "leaking out", as all parties involved have proven not to care too much about your privacy.
What's more, is that I've come to reconsider my online profile. You know how we warn our kids never to give out their real names on the Internet? Or their address and whatnot? Isn't it ironic then, that I've been doing just that for well over a decade? Not only that, but I've kept a pretty detailed diary and have interacted with thousands of people through dozens of forums. I've used the same alias in all of those places, making myself very identifiable.
Better late than never, but I've finally come to the decission to try and break down that online persona as well as possible. Wherever I can I've taken to changing my usernames and identifiers. That's one hint for people: don't use the same name everywhere.
A second point: on many forums it's not possible to delete all the posts you made. Most forums are of the opinion that providing an option to delete one's whole history is detrimental to both the discussions and to the content of their site. And of course they're right. So if you want to start culling posts you will either need to be selective and pick the worst stuff, or you'll spend hours upon hours manually deleting each and every post you made. Luckily there are tools to help you out, like Greasemonkey scripts that can automate browser tasks: to delete reddit comments, or to clean your facebook timeline. They're not foolproof, but it helps.
Remember: just about everything on the Internet is forever. If it's not people making copies of your photos or text, it's companies! The famous Internet wayback machine regularly snapshots whole websites for posterity. And sites like Topsy.com shamelessly take your whole Facebook/Google+/Twitter feed and retain fully searchable copies on their own website.
It's been said before and it'll be often repeated: think about what you post and to whom you make it available. Review your privacy settings on social media frequently and think hard if you want something to be shared across the globe.
That's why I've decided to dedicate the public version of this website to my professional activites: work, programming, learning. All of the other things will be passworded and only available to myself and my family.
kilala.nl tags: life, sysadmin,
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