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.

A busy start to the year

Well, my e-commerce game business which I had been letting quietly atrophy (it was by now largely a shell to collect royalties and manage licences) appears to be taking off at the start of the year. I'm not one to waste an opportunity, so we're setting up a few new stock suppliers and will have to see how it does.

On the family front I have had some bad news, so updates may be erratic for now.

Aims for this year:
Finish "Into Flight", my Nano-novel, after getting complaints from the beta-reader that I could not just drop it.
Finish editing the novel I was working on before, for publication.
Get some more articles and lenses written for charity.
Win the lottery (well, why not add something I won't manage in four weeks?)

And I am looking for a new aviation charity to support/promote this year so if you are interested or have one I should consider, please let me know.

And according the Unicreatures test I count as Flarius. Why not try it yourself?

A yearly roundup

Well, nearly at the end of 2009, and I don't know if I will get another chance to blog, so here's a quick roundup. All in all it's been a busy year:

On the literary front I've finished two novels - a bit of a change of direction from my normal books, but definitely interesting. In November I completed Nanowrimo, although that story is not finished. Instead of December being the month of novel-finishing it was the month of frantic ecommerce.

Online it's been busy: I've built a steady income from royalties on print articles but between discovering article writing, and affiliate marketing this has expanded my options. On the charity front, on Squidoo I got two hundred-plus lenses done and completed my target 200 challenge to myself.

• Made Squdioo Giant
• Made Squidoo Top 100
• MVP for KabFab's squid squad

And of course, that doesn't count moving house and getting the cats.

On a side note however, I would say that getting inside two nuclear bombers this year would definitely count as a high spot, as would getting a chance to have a look round the A1 Tornado when it pulled into the station.

It's been a mixed year. Hopefully 2010 will be a better.

A new article: The Surrey Iron Railway

A new article on Bukisa:
About the Surrey Iron Railway.

I am turning several of my lenses into articles after a number of users requested printable versions. My initial experiments with Lulu and free e-books was interesting, but there were complaints about download speed for the PDFs - and a few users whose security settings would not let them get the download after they requested it. If it wasn't free I'd feel quite bad for them, but fortunately I could send them one directly.

Instead, I'm now going for the best of both worlds. If the articles are on Bukisa online they can be read or printed for free by the user, and I get a penny a view for good causes so the work is still fund-raising.

Updates are likely to be patchy until after christmas though - working in ecommerce this is definitely the silly season!

Why vote? A new lens

Vote Rackcard by tirial
custom printed rack cards made on zazzle

http://www.squidoo.com/why-vote
Why should you vote? Election myths exploded

A new lens (I think it's number 237, but I may be wrong) about voting and British elections. I did this one because there is an election coming up in 2010, and frankly what I keep hearing locally is people saying they won't vote because it won't change anything.

Since that sounds rather like the counsel of despair, I thought I'd knock a few of the myths that keep coming up on the head. I've rounded up the worst of the ideas that seem to contribute to this view and put them in the lens, with details of why they are flawed.

The lens itself was a test, and will probably grow, but it got such a good reception when I put it up (thanks prosperity66!) that I thought I might leave it for a while.