Back From The Dead

Today I went to a conference sponsored by the well known internet site BlogHer. I wrote about it in detail here, but I wanted to discuss one of the workshops in this forum.

Public Parenting & Privacy Session speakers: Chris Jordan, Shannon Lowe, Crystal McKee, Shino Tanaka, and Shireen Mitchell.

I went to this class hoping that any privacy fears I had would be assuaged. Alas, it was not to be. The panel consisted of one cop, one blogger who had been stalked in her comments, one blogger who admitted her anxiety issues, and one super-public blogger who uses last names and locations and everything. The moderator actually ran a website that tracked privacy issues so she had a vested interest in the topic. I wish they would have had one not-very-paranoid regular mommy blogger. I would have been an excellent choice.

At the beginning of the session, the moderator asked the audience what their safety concerns were. The answers were:

• Sex predators
• Kidnapping
• Not embarrassing them
• Photos without permission - people stealing them or taking faces to put them on other photos.
• Worry about getting something in the mail. - if they can get address what else can they know?
• Future implications for them - job interviews career, or anything else.
• Questioning your parenting - you and ability to be a parent.
• Legal issues - people in legal battles blog being used against you.
• Violating their trust - some things not being kept secret.

It was concluded that everybody has a different threshold for privacy, but that the act of blogging is public. People discussed different ways to protect your self and your kids. The problem is that there is no statistical evidence surrounding mommyblogging and privacy. There is only anecdotal evidence, which was rampant in this session. Some people struggled personally with:

• An advertiser using her family's photo without permission.
• A reader continually posting a blogger's full name and address in the comments.
• An adoption being hindered due to an undisclosed blog and an agency "not liking her writing style."
• Criticism among acquaintances regarding a post.
• A political blogger who posted an ultrasound photo that was used against her in abortion debates.

Don't you want some solutions to the private vs. public blogging debate? I did. Here are some of the less obvious tips that were passed along:

• Change names to pseudonyms. This can be done by using the "search and replace" feature in blogger in order to edit past posts.
• Using photoshop, place a watermark over photos used on your blog.
• Trust your gut.
• Educate your children.

Not a lot of tips, huh? The truth is, if someone wants to track me down, they are going to be able to do it in reality or in virtual reality. Personally, I use the proper first names of my family. I don't use my last name or my hometown. Maybe this gives me a false sense of security, but I'm going to live with it for now. I like having a public blog. I hope I never have reason to change my mind.