Posting About Our Lives Is No Longer Private but Public

[treehugger101]

Well I post about my problems on forums, talk to friends and my family for advice to get their take on the matter.

[TheEvilJester]

"Shoot first, think later. Or don't think at all. Yeah! Shoot first, think never."

I <3 Brucey boy hahaha.

Thank you. .....Wait.... I mean... I'm not Bruce Campbell. I swear! :-P

Yeah, until someone from China hacks this forum and gets to your email account which can link to your name, location, etc then search you on facebook. NOTHING is private on the internet.

Yeah, hence why I said a message board is GENERALLY fairly private. YES, somebody COULD hack into it if they want. Seriously, though.... Let's use this message board as an example. Really, what are the odds that some random hacker would decide they want to hack into THIS message board? What would they gain from that?

But let's pretend for a second they did, and were able to figure out my actual e-mail address. The odds are astronomically slim that they'd wind up being anybody I know to where I'd care if they saw the things I shared here anyway. Honestly, if you were worried enough about that, you could create an alternate e-mail that you don't really use for anything and use that one to sign up for random message boards. Then even if somebody DID hack the message board, they couldn't connect you to anything. Yes, it is true that nothing on the internet is 100% safe and secure..... but I'm not going to live my life in a vacuum afraid to live my life at all for fear of everything that could happen to me in the outside world. As long as you are careful on the internet you will generally be okay.

[dontaskme]

Thank you. .....Wait.... I mean... I'm not Bruce Campbell. I swear! :-P



Yeah, hence why I said a message board is GENERALLY fairly private. YES, somebody COULD hack into it if they want. Seriously, though.... Let's use this message board as an example. Really, what are the odds that some random hacker would decide they want to hack into THIS message board? What would they gain from that?

But let's pretend for a second they did, and were able to figure out my actual e-mail address. The odds are astronomically slim that they'd wind up being anybody I know to where I'd care if they saw the things I shared here anyway. Honestly, if you were worried enough about that, you could create an alternate e-mail that you don't really use for anything and use that one to sign up for random message boards. Then even if somebody DID hack the message board, they couldn't connect you to anything. Yes, it is true that nothing on the internet is 100% safe and secure..... but I'm not going to live my life in a vacuum afraid to live my life at all for fear of everything that could happen to me in the outside world. As long as you are careful on the internet you will generally be okay.

That is not the point... the question was if you post something on the internet about your life, then it is no longer private but public, to which yes, anything on the internet becomes public property!

[TheEvilJester]

Yeah, good point. By the very fact that you are posting it on the Internet, it is no longer private. I guess my point being (and as others seem to be saying as well) that is kind of different. It is still "private" in that you have anonymity. Again, speaking generally, the likelihood of anybody you know in real life finding out about/linking any of the private stuff you share online to you directly is very slim. ....Again, that is when referring to an anonymous place like a message board. Of course, if you post stuff directly on your personal profiles such as on Facebook, that is NOT private because you are posting it directly as you.

I kind of think of it like this...

Imagine you keep a personal journal. You have not written your name or ANY kind of identifying information on the journal, but you write very personal things in it as anybody would in their journal.

If a friend/family member in your house sneaks a peak at your journal, they know it is your journal and know it is your words/thoughts. If you accidentally leave the journal on your seat on the train and a stranger finds it and reads it, they have no idea who the heck wrote it. They could even run into you the very next day and they'd never know it was your journal unless you told them.

[Gigabitch]

I would SO much rather spread all of my personal business all over this anonymous website for the world to see than have my husband read my journal. Oh, God. Just the thought...

By the time I had been posting on this site for two years I had met four or five of the people on here in person and I'm still feeling secure about it. That's the great thing about this site- you come to understand that your little secrets and concerns are just like everyone else's (mostly) and you can become so much more accepting of everyone, including yourself.

[melancholia]

I met a good friend of mine on the relationship fora that the Cosmo website used to have. Now we've been friends for six years and I just went to visit her in NY in October for her wedding! I live 4,000 miles away on the West Coast in Canada. We had the chance to meet for the first time, and for me to be able to participate at her wedding to her fiance was an incredible experience. I wouldn't trade that for the world, and I think it's really cool that we can connect with so many different people from so many different places!

- - - Updated - - -

(I'm a stand up comedian) and I made the mistake once of posting a joke on FB related to relationship fora. The status read: "Nothing makes you feel better about being single, quite like reading other people's posts in a relationship forum".... and the guy I am dating saw it, didn't realize it was a joke, and didn't like it very much haha. I mean, I get why he felt that way; because if I had seen him post it, and didn't know it was a joke, I would have been like "wtf, what do you mean you're single?"

The moral of the story is: don't mesh your relationship forum life with your real life, unless you are okay with your real friends/family knowing about it.

[TheEvilJester]

I've actually made some really good friends online, and some of those were met in a forum. I've made friends in a pen pal sort of way with a few folks on this very forum, in fact. With them, I might privately share details I wouldn't share here on the boards. Then there are things I only trust with VERY few, and things I trust with nobody except the voices in my head...... and even them I don't always trust. :-P It's all about what you personally feel comfortable sharing where.

[Melo11]

It's a free alternative of psychologist's expensive courses

[TheEvilJester]

LOL! Well... just let me make it abundantly clear that none of us here are professionals. You should certainly NOT consider this a viable alternative to therapy/advice from and actual trained professional in a situation where that may be warranted. This is much more akin to asking your friends for advice.... but with the relative anonymity of us not actually knowing who you are.