Privacy issues

To my surprise, many people have asked me to update my blog, continuing updating about my experiences and anecdotes. I feel after these comments that this blog is accomplishing its goal of bridging me and you; my friends and family.

First of all, I should say why I couldn't get updated my blog: the excuse is that I have been very, very busy, not only work-wise, but also with my family, besides some other personal stuff. I'll update opportunely on each of these things.

But now, let me pose a thought I've been having from a long time ago. It's about the privacy and exposure of oneself by keeping updated a blog, or any webpage of public access. Fortunately for me, I'm very much aware of these issues and their consequences. In fact, it isn't that difficult to find posts in the same blogs, or comments from (in general anonymous) the public reading each single post published. Or any insulting comment as well, which is removed my the blog owner eventually. So far, I've been lucky and didn't have many such bad experiences, while I know that it happened to friends and people I know through blogs/social networking pages.

It's also funny to see how some (I'd say most of) people really aren't aware of these issues and, mainly, of their consequences. I have fun eavesdropping people in facebook, getting to know what is going on the parties they go, how their mood is, and even how their relationship is doing. A time ago I commented about the messenger nicknames, this is reflecting many things about people's private life in many many cases.

As a matter of fact, I've been taking some actions to protect myself. Along these actions, I try to be somewhat anonymous, just a guy called José born in Salta, living now in Eindhoven, studying at the local university. I stopped uploading pictures of my recent activities, or at most I only upload a few as decoration of my posts. I've stopped anticipating my future activities or plans. Even when I admit that I have an account in facebook, and in any other social contacts portals, I just have an account to gossip about the other people. And believe me, it's more effective than the so conventional mouth-to-mouth gossip. Nowadays, there are some ways to gain some privacy, though. But either, they are minimal, or people don't know how to activate them in order to minimize exposure.

To summarize, I like the impact this blog is having along my friends, relatives and family. It also put in contact with many unknown people who requested me some information, for instance. The moral of this post is that you should be aware of the risk it takes to be more popular than if one wouldn't have a blog, or an account at any social networking spaces. Now, tell me what you think about this, and if you had or know of any experience with this new way of getting in touch with people.