The other day I decided I wanted to have a better online presence. I came to this conclusion after googling my name, and saw that someone else's facebook page was the top result. Being Mr. Ultracompetitive, I could not stand to be second on the list.
This got me thinking about privacy and how much information I wanted online. I know quite a few people who use an alias for their blog, or don't tie their LinkedIn profile to their facebook profile, as they want to keep these two aspects of their life separate. After thinking about this, I believe it is futile to try and do this. A smart person with enough time is still going to be able to tie the pieces together and figure out what they want to know. Plus there is so much information on you already out there that is out of your control (public government records, etc.), it seems pointless to try and hide what you did this last weekend.
So I decided to go the other way with my sites. I am linking all the pages together, and letting people freely flow from one to the other. This includes my professional information (LinkedIn.com), my extra curricular activities (Meetup.com), my gaming (Steam profile and AggroLAN), my projects website (www.shawngoertzen.com) and my blog. So if anyone stumbles onto any of these, they will easily be able to find all the information I have shared. Since I believe people can find the information out anyway, why not tie everything together.
I also don't care of people know a lot about me. Is it going to affect me at all if you know I live in Cuyahoga Falls? Or that I have cats and kids? Or that I like video games and volleyball? It just doesn't seem to matter to me if people know all of this about me. And by know that everything I post will be accessable to everyone, I just have to be aware not to say that my gaming friends are idiots, as I know they could potentially be reading this.
So if you don't know me yet, explore the sites and be entertained (all the links are in the left column). Check out my gaming scores, or what I did at my last job. It doesn't matter to me. Hopefully it will just allow people to know me better, and strike up an (online) conversation with me, with whatever items they can relate to.
Drop me a comment to let me know what you think.
Shawn
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
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Wow- when you go online, you REALLY go online! ;) Nice to have you here. An congrats on the newest addition!
ReplyDeleteI'm in your camp. I think people are absolutely paranoid about being tracked, found, etc. Like most of the world could give two hoots about most of the rest of us. You would know better but it seems that the stuff that leads to identity theft and the like is the stuff that you can't control much anyway.
ReplyDeleteWelcome to blogging, Shawn! I just saw this at RM's site. I must admit, I err on the side of being overly cautious. I guess my job has made me super paranoid, ha ha! Seriously, though, if you google my name you'll be able to figure out that I was in the military and where I went to college, and that's about it. I don't use Facebook or LinkedIn (don't need them for my line of work) and my blog is listed under my Chinese name, so the likelyhood of someone stumbling across it and linking it to me is pretty small.
ReplyDeleteThanks for everyone's comments. It is interesting to see where everyone falls on this issue.
ReplyDeleteI watched a youtube video the other day, where a private investigator talked about what he did to research people online. He had no problem tracking people down without them ever even posting anything online. Like Mike said, most things are out of your control anyway.