Introduction to Privacy’s a Joke

Privacy’s a joke. Security is not.

After dealing with online harassment for the first time on a third-party site, and with a person whose IP and other information I didn’t readily have available as the Administrator of the site, I learned a lot from how they operate to how one should respond.

At the end of 2 months the ordeal was finally resolved. The person never confessed to the actions, and instead denied it to his family when I presented them with it, and cooperated in removing any mention of it on his social network sites. Whether the person I tracked down was the actual offender or a highly coincidental bystander, it makes little difference. The real issue, however, was the wealth of information I ended up finding about this individual combined with how easy it was to get it all.

I decided I would start a blog post series to help others less privacy-savvy internet users make sure they aren’t broadcasting tons of personal information out to the world at large, and also how to deal with online harassment – the correct way (not the vigilante methods I used).

The first post will be how to deal with online harassment, and what courses of action are available. After that, I’ll show you what information is available about you on the internet, and just how easy it is to mess up an otherwise clean online identity through something as simple as Favorite-ing a Youtube video, posting an update to Twitter, or even running a website under a pseudonym. There will be a new post every Monday, starting January 3rd, 2011 @ 10:00am CST, and the series will continue as long as I have content to write about.

The series is called “Privacy’s a Joke” because when it come to online actions, everything is traceable. And unless you jump through some major technical hoops (as most users don’t) then everything you do provides a little more information about who you are. However, there are things you can do to minimize what information gets put online, and who has access to it.