Is Blogging Safe?

I was just at The Bumbles blog reading a post about privacy online. How much transparency should we have? Should we be concerned that one of our followers will turn into a cyber bully, indeed a stalker? As always, the Bumbles hosted quite a lively discussion so you may want to pop over there and get their take on the topic.

As a published author who wants to connect with my readers, it's a difficult line I walk. I feel like I'm doing a fancy routine on a balance beam or worse, walking a tight rope. I want to share interesting tidbits about me, the person behind the stories, so I can make a personal connection to readers.

I've also made blogging friends from blogs I visit and from bloggers who visit me. Most are fellow writers with whom I have a lot in common. Others are readers or moms like myself. We talk shop. We talk about our families, how they affect our writing, how our writing affects them, and how our writing mixes with the rest of our daily lives. A few times I've forgotten other people are privy to the conversation because they lurk. They read the posts, perhaps read the comments, but don't leave comments of their own. I know because I check my daily stats and many more people visit than leave comments.

To date, I've not been part of a flame war online and I hope never to be. I've witnessed a few and don't wish to be involved. I like to leave conflict to my fictional characters. It's fun to read, even fun to create in a fictional setting, but I hate it in real life. How I became a customer service rep much less manager of a customer service department I'll never understand. It's a mystery as I run from conflict.

Perhaps admitting what I do in my day job is giving out too much information. However, I don't give out my employer's name or city, so hopefully, that protects my privacy while still sharing what makes me tick.

Some of the commenters on The Bumbles post about this topic are even leery of using Facebook. Again, as an author trying to get my name out to the reading public, I have accounts on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. Up to now, I've not had a problem except for finding time to visit all my accounts and still find time to write, blog, be a mom and wife, work a full time job... This week, I chose to write and thus I didn't blog as much. But what is a writer who doesn't write? That's food for another blog post.

As for lurking, I'll admit it. I lurk on some blogs. On some I comment a lot. Others I comment sometimes. It depends on whether I can leave a relevant, intelligent response. I don't want to leave an inane comment just to show my name. One of my favorite blogs to read is Copyblogger. It's intelligent and provides a lot of useful blogging and promotion advice. I'm a huge fan and read it daily. Yet I've never left a comment. Why? I'm afraid my addition to the conversation wouldn't be helfpful. Also, it's more like a magazine or newspaper than a friend.

What about you?

Do you lurk and if so, why? How much information do you share on your blog or in your emails with the online community?

If you're on Facebook, MySpace, or another social medium, do you post pictures of yourself and even your family?

Is Privacy Gone With The Wind?

Yesterday I posted about Google Alerts being a second Big Brother and I received some comments telling me about Google Maps (which lead people straight to your door with color maps) and Zapasearch, etc. One aspiring author mentioned she and her hubby had just discussed this issue and how she should handle it. Personally, I took a pseudonym that is nothing similar to my real name. Below I'll go into deeper discussion about the pros and cons of using a pseudonym. Secondly, I would advise renting a PO Box so that you do not give out the address of your private residence. If you send out a newsletter, you must provide an address or you can land in legal trouble if someone has a beef with your emails (or snail mail) and it's not supplied. With anything in life, there are pros and cons. While having a pseudonym helps me, I now realize that there are many other people who already have the name I adopted. I had googled it before selecting it and hadn't found anyone then, and obviously no one who was famous with the name "Ashley Ladd". Today, however, using a Zapasearch I found a page full of Ashley Ladds. I certainly don't mean to cause anyone else problems. However, I've come to the conclusion it's impossible to choose a name that is unique. I came to this conclusion at the day job many years ago. We have a database of more than 4 million names. Many people call and only give their name, certain we can identify them with such scanty information. Fortunately, or unfortunately, that is not the case. Why? Because even names that sound obscure usually have two or more people who share it. And that's in our data base alone. Usually I find page fulls of the same name when I do a name search. Years ago, when I was a much newer employee and user of this data base, I made the mistake of assuming the person who wrote a letter (and demanding a reply) was the same person I found in our data base, because the name seemed so obscure. A week later, I received an extremely nasty reply back that my letter's recipient wasn't the same person and to delete her name from our records as I had been so lax with the other person's data. Oops! I wasn't trying to be. Ever since, I've erred in the other direction. Of course, now we get nasty letters and phone that we've not responded to people. Thus for Google purposes, perhaps the news isn't as black as I painted it yesterday. Just because someone googles your name, they can't be sure they've located the right person. On the other hand, remember Terminator 1? When the Terminator merely went down the list of Sarah Connors in the phone book, killing every one so he could be sure he got the right one? <> Extreme case scenario, I know. I tend to worry. Blame it on my German roots. My dad's mother was a worry wort, too. Something else that worried me when I read it yesterday in a couple places was news of a global food shortage? One blog is talking about growing their own food. Not a bad idea ever. Fresh is good. Being prepared is good. My church preaches food storage and I used to be big into it, especially right before Y2K. So I've been googling articles this weekend about the rice and grain shortage, about how Costco and Sam's club are limiting the amount of rice they will sell. It doesn't sound quite as dire (for Americans and 1st world countries) as I first thought, but then I'm not an expert and plan to do more research later. In case that sounded cavalier, believe me, I'm very concerned for all the world's people. Whereas this will definitely hit my pocket book and with 6 mouths to feed in my household (13 if you count 2 dogs and 5 cats also), it won't be easy. However, I work for a charity that serves the poorest of the poor in the Caribbean and Latin America, which includes Haiti where food riots are going on as we speak. I receive concerned, and even accusing, letters daily claiming we (my charity) are not getting food into Haiti because of news articles other agencies published that food isn't getting into Haiti in general. I've been assured that my agency IS getting food into Haiti and getting it out to the people. Unfortunately, our agency alone cannot solve the entire problem, much as we'd love to do so and hard as we're trying. In Haiti alone, there are more than 7 billion destitute poor. I don't mean merely a little low on money so they can't go to the movies this week or even pay their electric bill. Most of these people live in shacks made of cardboard or rotted wood and rusty tin they scavanged from the local dump. They also subsist on the dumps for food and clothing and toys. Sometimes they don't eat even one small meal a day and count themselves lucky if they have just one small meal. This is pretty unimaginable in my house and my state. We may not always like what's in the pantry, but we won't starve. My kids complain there's "no food" when the pantries (2 of them in my house) and the fridge and deep freeze are all overflowing. Can you say spoiled? I can. (Hubby says the kids mean there's no handy snacks or fast food they don't have to cook first.) I also recently read a blog that compared weekly grocery bills in different countries. In the US, they averaged about $400.00 weekly and many other countries were at least $250.00 weekly. Someone please please tell my hubby as he's always on my back about spending too much money on food. I mean REALLY BIGTIME on my back. And I don't typically spend as much as $400.00 a week on our food bill. So how are you faring on food? Are you concerned about the global food crisis? What are you doing about it, if anything? One last quick question. We mentioned a couple days ago that black male cats are more lovable and loving than most cats. I agree from my personal observations. However, when I tried to google this for actual proof, I found nothing in the first four search pages. Does anyone have more information about this?