Expectation of Privacy
Mar. 25th, 2008 01:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeThe little contretemps going on in the previous entry and other places that I'd point except I fear that I'd be accused of abuse is another example of people having a misplaced sense of privacy in their LJs and other blog-like things. If you write in public, expect anyone in the world who can operate a web browser to be able to see it. When I write about things that I don't want indexed by Google Search, I friends-lock them, which mostly works. If I only want myself to see them, I mark them private, something I've done only a couple of times because such entries are usually better not saved at all -- write and delete if necessary, with the computer off line, to get it out of your system, but if you save it to your LJ, you're risking setting it loose when you didn't want to do so. I have done so a couple of times.
And specifically to me, if you don't want me to see it at least in summary, never mention "Hugo Award," "NASFiC", "WSFS," "World Science Fiction Society," "Worldcon," or "World Science Fiction Convention" in an unlocked top-level post. (Comments don't appear to get indexed so well.) I (and several other people) have those phrases on a standing Google search for Mark Protection Committee purposes. (And in fact, we've found potential mark offenders that way; not people complaining about the Hugos or whatever, but people misusing the service marks, which is not the same thing at all.) We don't always comment, but sometimes we do. In this case, I would clearly have been better off keeping my mouth shut, but y'all know how difficult that is for me.
But otherwise, if you write in public, you should have no expectation of privacy of your writing. You may think you're writing for just a few friends, but you can be seen by anyone. And that includes what I'm writing right now.
And specifically to me, if you don't want me to see it at least in summary, never mention "Hugo Award," "NASFiC", "WSFS," "World Science Fiction Society," "Worldcon," or "World Science Fiction Convention" in an unlocked top-level post. (Comments don't appear to get indexed so well.) I (and several other people) have those phrases on a standing Google search for Mark Protection Committee purposes. (And in fact, we've found potential mark offenders that way; not people complaining about the Hugos or whatever, but people misusing the service marks, which is not the same thing at all.) We don't always comment, but sometimes we do. In this case, I would clearly have been better off keeping my mouth shut, but y'all know how difficult that is for me.
But otherwise, if you write in public, you should have no expectation of privacy of your writing. You may think you're writing for just a few friends, but you can be seen by anyone. And that includes what I'm writing right now.
