Stephanie A. Lloyd

Cartoon by Hugh MacLeod

With all the talk about Facebook and privacy issues recently I started thinking about how I manage my personal privacy online, and I’m curious how others handle this as well. I would imagine that a lot of us are doing it differently.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m a woman, but I do think a lot about my personal physical security in addition to online privacy issues. With geolocation rising so quickly in popularity, I have more concerns about this now than ever.

Yesterday I had lunch with Miriam Salpeter of Keppie Careers and it came up in conversation that she once tried to find my home address through Google and could not. I can’t lie…this made me very happy!

I’m very careful about giving out my home address, and while I work from home I pay to have a virtual office address which is the legal address of my company and where all my mail goes.

Google Alerts

I have Google Alerts set up to notify me about anything containing my name or company name online. I also have alerts set up for my home address as well as my phone number. This allows me to monitor “what Google knows about me” without much effort, and if something arises that I’m not comfortable with I can take action accordingly.

Twitter

You may have noticed that I sometimes tweet about my large, very overprotective dog. This is not by accident.

I’m not as good about doing this as I used to be – usually for promotional reasons – but I do try to somewhat limit announcing my current or future whereabouts. So, if I’m going to Houston’s in Buckhead for lunch with a friend, I may state that I’m having lunch with that friend, but won’t say where until after we’ve left.

When I say “promotional reasons” I host and co-host tweetups from time to time, and naturally if you want people to show up you have to promote them in advance. So in those cases, or if I will be speaking somewhere or attending a conference, it’s a little more difficult to keep my future whereabouts a secret.

Facebook

I’m kind of a privacy control freak on Facebook…constantly checking my privacy settings; and about a year ago I took down most of my photos. For example, I had some on there from college and from my high school reunion. Even when I did have these photos on Facebook, only a few people had access to them. But, with Facebook constantly messing with our privacy settings and not telling us they’ve done it, I decided better safe than sorry. Now the only photos I have on there at all are pictures of my dog, my family, and from business and networking events like ERE and #punkATL.

Additionally, I do not allow anyone to write on my wall, and as soon as someone tags me in a photo or video I look at it and untag it immediately if I’m not comfortable with it. You just don’t always know what people are going to do…what they may find perfectly acceptable to post, you may be horrified by.

I have my birth date listed, but not the year, and no one can see my profile unless they are friends directly with me. None of this “friends of friends” and “networks” stuff.

People who are not my friends on Facebook can’t even see what city or state I live in. Search results are set so that I only show up in Facebook searches for friends, and my profile information won’t show up in public search results.

If you haven’t yet read this warning about Facebook Connections, you need to. And I mean, stop and read it very thoroughly, and then go look at your “Friends” on Facebook and you’ll see that the list now includes many sites you’ve “shared” or “liked.” Next, look at the privacy settings for each of these “connections.” (I use two lists to manage how much someone can see of my Facebook profile. People I don’t know well are on a list that is more restrictive than people I know very well. This second list includes all of 10 people. Seriously. And I have known those 10 people a long, long time.)

Anyway, I did this, and these new “connections” Facebook had assigned to me without my knowledge or permission were not assigned to either of my lists so they could see anything and everything on my Facebook profile! Because I barely have anything on there of interest to anyone anymore it didn’t freak me out that much – but the IDEA they they have done this to all of us without our knowledge or permission certainly did.

Finally, I do not allow any third party applications to access any of my information.

There’s more, but I think you get the picture…click here to read more on the latest with Facebook’s privacy policies and issues.

Foursquare + Gowalla

My biggest concern with these is obviously announcing to the world where you are. So, I’m very careful about who I’m connected with on these applications, and I don’t always share my check-ins on Twitter or Facebook.

I also try to remember to check in when I’m leaving rather than when I arrive.

Who has time to deal with all of this??

It’s a fast-changing world and we have to keep up.

All of this may seem like a lot of work and you may wonder whether it’s worth it. That is something you have to decide for yourself.

For me the benefits of connecting with others online far outweighs the hassle of managing privacy settings. Plus, you know, it’s what I do for a living so unless I want to get a new career (I don’t), this is something I just need to deal with.

If you want to read another perspective on this subject, Craig Fisher recently wrote a great blog post, “Social Media Privacy? Get Over It.”

I’m curious: What do you do to protect yourself online?

Tagged as: No stalking please, Social Media, Stephanie A. Lloyd

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