There are some people I know – even some readers of this not-so-anonymous blog – who blog about any number of things that would normally be confined to either their subconscious or chatted over a neighbor’s fence (perhaps over a fabulous martini). In the case of work-related gossip, I would wager that if you are going to involve yourself in such an endeavor, it is best to do this anonymously. So, whilst trolling through MeFi earlier this morning, I happened upon a link to the Electronic Frontier Foundation‘s How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else).

One thing they don’t mention here is that any traffic (read: email) that you send using your company’s email servers is their property and so you should not consider your work email “private”. That is what a Gmail account is for!

While they do mention “limiting the audience” of your blog, I have found that unless you restrict your readership manually, anyone and everyone you know will eventually stumble upon your blog. My furthest stretch has been the dairy farmer that lived down the country road in Botetourt County, Virginia, where my great-uncle Joe lives. He mentioned to my Uncle Joe that he had read a website about my and Kelly’s adventures in Eagle Rock, VA. This should underscore how important not giving away your particulars is when attempting to stay anonymous. The careful and intrepid information-seeker will no-doubt attempt to put together a sketch of you through the scraps of info they can find on the internet. For example — I once had a man keep calling my house and requesting that he speak with Pablo Escobar (the now-deceased Columbian druglord). After a pair of short calls, I decided to find out just who my caller was, only armed with his phone number. Thanks to reverse phone directories, Google, and some luck, I found his name, address, his AOL username (which could be contacted via AIM), his homepage, highschool, job history, etc, etc. That turned his next call into an hour-long tango of “I know more about you than you probably ever cared me to know”. I really just wanted the guy to quit calling the house at all hours, but I figured I might as well have fun with it.

So — take care out there on the Intarweb. It is a wild and wonderful place. But, as with most wild and wonderful places, you could be eaten by bears (and by eaten by bears, I mean your job or life could be mauled. Not by bears, but by people who just don’t get the joke).

“With super-powers comes super-responsibility”


– “The Amazing Strobe”