Thoughts About Online Privacy
Finding myself in the spotlight over the past couple of weeks has given me pause for thought. Why was I lit up like I was? One important part of that answer is that I purposely made myself easy to find. My name isn’t that common, although googling my name comes up with an athlete (decidedly not me), a youngster living in the great state of Oklahoma (again, not me nor a relative), as well as me, myself, and I. But in the confines of the Cisco networking community, if you see my name in a comment on a blog or in a forum by my name, it’s probably me. Yes, it could be someone pretending to be me, I’ll grant you that, but how often does that happen, really?
I made a conscious effort to be accessible. I got involved with Facebook and LinkedIn, making sure my public profiles were searchable. My resume was online in several places, complete with a detailed work history. If you poked around whois or ARIN, you would have found me there (and still can on a few records). I used my real name when I commented on blogs. On all sites that supported a headshot via profile or gravatar, I used the same picture, an actual picture of me. I ain’t pretty, but the point of the headshot was to bring even more unity to my online presence. I cross-linked this site everywhere I could without being a jerk about it, in an act of “brand-awareness” to use marketing lingo.
When I found myself blinking in that excruciatingly bright spotlight, I was uncomfortable. I didn’t like being quite so accessible. I even found it scary/nauseating as I reflected on just how much information about myself that I’d made freely available. A little obfuscation can be a good thing, I’ve decided. So in the “for what it’s worth” department, here’s some things I’ve done to try to get back under the radar a bit. Most of you do some or all of these things already; I know that. I’m getting with the program a bit late.
- My Facebook and LinkedIn accounts are gone. I’ve removed them completely. Facebook was sort of fun, but sort of a time-suck as well. I ran into some old friends, as well as several blog readers from all over the world. But I decided that overall, I didn’t want to be reached that way anymore. I feel the same about LinkedIn, for similar reasons. LinkedIn is professionally-oriented, but I’m not looking for a new employer right now.
- I had several e-mail addresses I was using. All gone…down to one “real” address, although some of my old addresses still work as aliases for the time-being. While this doesn’t help privacy directly, it’s an e-mail address that isn’t “out there” very much. Not many people know of it. I’ll be doing more to obfuscate my e-mail address via a contact form and possibly other ways. Running your own mail server has its advantages.
- My resume is down. Frankly, my resume was just out there for the sake of recruiters, but again, I’m not looking for employment right now. Yes, I received a fairly steady stream of recruiting calls as a direct result of my resume being online, but they were mostly for jobs for which I was ill-suited, required a long move, didn’t pay well, or were contract-only. Don’t get me wrong - some of the recruiter calls were genuinely interesting, but it’s going to take a lot of money before I would consider leaving where I am now. So why have my resume out there? Why tell the world all of this information about my past history and work accomplishments? That information should be on a need-to-know basis. Most of the Internet doesn’t need to know. When I need a new gig, I’ll call Eman Conde, get him a current copy of my resume, and we’ll figure something out.
- Any forum participation or mailing lists I do will be anonymous, and the ID I use will vary by forum or list. I don’t do much in the way of forums, just because it’s hard to keep up with such things. But if I’m out there, it’ll be sourced from some blind e-mail account and tied to a nondescript username.
- I’ve dug through Google, and cleaned up old stuff out there that I could. I found some interesting things out there from years ago that I’d forgotten I’d ever created. I wiped out lots of stuff that lives only in the Google cache now, and will fall out of their cache in a few weeks from what I’ve read.
- Bleeding over into the land of unhealthy paranoia, I’ve removed family pictures and most other personal belongings from my workspace. I don’t need someone getting an eyeful of my family, and then taking an inordinate interest. About the only personal thing at my desk right now is my Daily Dilbert calendar. Other than that, I’m all business when I’m at work. Would you call that paranoid? Oh, I would - no question about it. You might think I’m crazy. But there’s a method to all of this. The idea is to make it such that I can disappear quickly without a lot of complications, should I need to. Compartmentalizing my life is a part of making that possible.
I have a lot more work to do to further obfuscate my online presence. I’m addressing those things. There have been some immediate rewards in the actions I’ve already taken. My spam volume has gone down tremendously. Some of my time has freed up. You wouldn’t think Facebook or LinkedIn would take time, but they do - just more places to receive messages, more profiles to maintain.
What do you think about online privacy? How do you balance the desire to be accessible with the paranoia that someone might use that information against you? Has what happened to me freaked you out at all, assuming you participate in online communities?
7 Responses to “Thoughts About Online Privacy”
June 20th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
I don’t think anyone can blame you for this reaction considering the humiliation at the hands of the witch hunter you’ve taken… Best wishes to you as you get your life back in order.
How did Keith do on his Lab Exam?? His lab was scheduled Thursday, I understand?!
June 21st, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Privacy what’s that?
Here in Sweden we will soon not know what the word means.
(Read more on http://www.thelocal.se/12534/20080618/)
While on the subject I watched a great movie the other day called “Das Leben der Anderen” (The Lives of Others). I can highly recommend it. It reminded me of how Sweden will be in the years to come ;).
June 21st, 2008 at 2:31 pm
I think personal information must be accessible only for real, but not virtual environment for every man.
Internet communities are good only for professional information exchange.
June 22nd, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Hmm…
An interesting approach. I’ll admit it is the safer of the two vantage points that I think of given the recent history.
I can tell you this, it is your name and reputation that saved you and it was your name that was the reason that so many people in our own community that went to bat for you my friend.
Had it just been an alias, many of us (I hate to say it, but myself included) may not have felt quite so hot about the issue at hand. It was not, it was Ethan Banks, and it was for Ethan Banks that we all gor so riled up about.
I recall being called by one friend the evening I heard about this issue. I recall having another friend’s friendly advice to not put my own name out there and comment, “keep it anonymous” was the recommendation.
Now for me, I’m out there, good, bad, or indifferent. So far it has helped me more than hindered me, I know people across the globe. And more people seem to know something about me in return.
I guess I take a chance, we all do. I’m sure there may be employers who may not hire me based on one or more of my posts.
I’ve not met them.
I have been hired at least twice already based on my posting history that I know of:
Quote:
“If you want to know more about Darby, just google his name”.
Quote:
“King of Routers” - don’t laugh this one is recent.
I’ve gotten other ones that I found warming and sometimes amusing.
But I like the idea that people feel they know me before we even meet. Seriously.
When I go places and post it, people contact me and we go out for a coffee or a meal, it’s kind of fun.
I have a linkedin.com profile, a facebook profile, and a myspace account or two. I’m on more forums than the blubonic plague and I get a decent number of emails for everything from fixing a technical problem to maybe… reviewing someone’s resume and giving some kind of career advice. It’s all fair game on any given day.
I’ve got a couple of people that I know do not care for my posts. I’ve got a lot more people who do seem to care for them.
It’s crazy.
I respect your opinion and I know being more private would allow for more time to do other things, however, I’ve grown accustomed to being online and maintaining a presence. Some places allow me to moderate and I even became an Admin of at least one forum as a direct result of my Cisco-related study activities and advice.
So I guess it depends on one’s own view.
I respect yours. I know I saved a lot of time after I was asked not post any more at Groupstudy earlier this year.
But I kind of miss that group too. I’m still in touch with some people from Groupstudy but not quite like before.
I can say this: When I figured out that my information was already readily available to mostly anyone out there for “their purposes”, it seemed to make sense to me to make the system work in my own favor as well.
Of course, I could be wrong and people could hate what I write, I guess some people might never say either way.
I prefer to keep my name if I can.
Later
June 23rd, 2008 at 9:57 am
Nice to have you back Ethan.
As far as Internet anonymity goes, I chose that direction simply because I do not have the time to respond to emails. I also wanted the freedom to comment on vendors, my work, and Cisco with some expectation of anonymity. Of course the fatal flaw with this plan is that when you pass the lab, it’s pretty easy to match your digits with your name. After that it’s only a couple of quick Google searches to find out your background.
The upside to having your name out there is that if you decide to look for another position your name recognition will be a great benefit.
Did Keith take the lab already? If so, will he be posting about it?
June 25th, 2008 at 10:27 am
That was a very interesting and thought-provoking posting Ethan.
I must admit that what happened to you did freak me out. I think one reason you got so much support was that we all felt threatened to a greater or lesser extent. I was thinking “if someone with the integrity of Ethan Banks can become a target for a predator, then what hope is there for any of us.” I was imagining all sorts of distasteful scenarios .. everything from underhand commercial pressure to outright extortion.
So I was immensely relieved when you came back on line and it looked as though it would all blow over. In handling it the way you did, you have done us all a huge service, and the CCIE blogosphere is a safer and more open place because of it.
Darby makes a very interesting point. You have lots of friends on line because we all feel we know you through your postings. That has got to be a valuable asset.
For the moment I shall be keeping my own name open, even at risk of leakage between my CCIE activities and scouts, and my music, and my family-tree investigations. And just trust to God that the outcome will be benevolent.
November 29th, 2009 at 11:44 am
Revisiting the subjet:
Let’s see - since I published my view here I’ve since helped to make Sadikhov.com 100% dump free and as such I traded a good deal of my own online popularity in the process.
Also, since this event, I took notice of the extreme rate at which people actually take the dump for the CCIE Lab versus actually working hard and harder to pass the damned thing. Since a lot of my online popularity comes from the CCIE and old and new - I took a bit of a hit here too.
Finally - the legal thing with Dynamips which Cisco does not seem to be worried about (SAS fixes this soon enough anyway)… I took a hit in that department.
So… being online can be a two-edged sword, I went from like 99% totally beloved to about 50-60% over a few issues that seem to be very close and dear to a lot of people really fast.
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