A rant about privacy

I like my web ID. I've been using it for twenty years or so. I use it so I don't have to use my name online.

It's not linked to my real name or career because frankly, what I do in my day job (consulting) is not something I want to do online after hours. I've got other interests.

So why on earth have places like Yahoo started displaying real names on profiles? I've wiped my Yahoo profile after getting work requests when I wrote about steam trains, for heaven's sake! Then you have to deal with some idiot saying that your answer must be wrong because of your nationality/ background/ job/ whatever... rather than checking the facts. When my career is linked I also get people I don't know, with no interest in what we were discussing, asking me to help them get jobs, provide confidential contact info for companies and so on.

Here's a hint. If I wanted to talk work I'd do it on the work boards. If I want to talk about my hobbies and interests, and the things I'd like to do I'll be on a private board and not using my work-name. Getting hit up to do work for free or hand out contacts does not impress me.

Remove anonymity and I'll leave your site because I keep my personal life strictly seperate from my professional one.

The worst offenders so far are everyclick and yahoo, but it seems to be a trend. I don't know what's behind it but I am really, really, sick of it.

That's my personal complaint over with.

And my professional view? With the increasing concerns over ID theft, I find it very, very, odd that companies holding personal IDs seem to be going out of their way to make it easier for the thieves and not harder.

I would not be writing if I had not just run into this professionally. One notable case (details fudged) was a recent client who found her address, date of birth and full name displayed on the homepage an ISP had thoughtfully created for her, gathering information from the various online services she used. Of course, as they had created it automatically they had not bothered to put the privacy settings up and made it open for public view. She had never agreed to this and they did not tell her they had created it until after the fact.

This kind of irresponsibility bugs me. Once the information is out there there is no way to get it back, and she's the one who had to call me in to track it down and help her block her credit report and other details because of their carelessness. Protect yourself online: If you are using such a service, do check what they have made available to general viewers and also what is on any homepages for online services like yahoo, facebook etc. You may be surprised.

And that's the last crossover between professional and personal you should see on this blog.

For the record:

• I consult in IT, which I am good at.
• Tirial writes about planes, trains, and interesting stuff, which I enjoy.

Rants about Identity differentiation (required by some professions e.g. writing, and an increasing problem to achieve online) may follow tomorrow.