Internet spies, stay away.

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I keep my facebook private and my friends on it are hidden from the public now, I also set my myspace profile to private and now my Babycenter profile, I will never tell anyone in real life what my usernames are online or tell them my ebay ID. If I ever apply for any jobs in the future, I will use a different email address I had never used online when I register on websites. That way they won't find me on forums and I will make it harder for them to spy on me.

And some people say I am being paranoid. Damn right I am because I am hearing now these days how work places will search your name online to check out your facebook or myspace or other sites and they will even do a search on your email address and not want to call you for an interview if they see anything to use against you. I have even heard how people are losing their jobs these days for what they post online so I might stop posting my photos too as well and maybe of my own son or husband. That way it will be even harder for spies to find me online.

Anyone else this cautious too? What things do you do to prevent spies? Do you get this extreme?


I am starting to think about if I shall remove my family members or not on my facebook and only have them as my friends so they aren't visible to the public and I be even more protected from the spies.

I've been paranoid for a long time, and I definitely do all those things too. I didn't even want to join Facebook because of privacy issues. But I ended up joining and just not using my real name. I have my SO listed, but he doesn't use his real name either. I never use my real name online, because it's quite unique. If I were named Bob Smith or something, I might not care. I keep a separate email for work purposes as well.

I am debating about rather I shall change my names on forums I go to that allow you to change your username. If I was so good at making up names, I would register on forums with different names and never run out of ideas.

I think you are wise to be careful. Lots of people aren't careful and they say all sorts of outrageous things or post pictures of themselves drunk at a party without thinking of who might see it. I only friend people I know in real life on Facebook and I don't post any questionable photos. I am so old that no questionable photos of me exist that I know of that are owned by other people. In my generation, people didn't carry cameras around with them all the time so drunken parties of our youth tended to not be photographed. That is different for younger people.

I am also careful here. I never say my actual name, location, job, or post a photo.

The worst privacy-violating vice of my generation is blogging. I notice that a lot of my fellow middle aged mothers have Mommy Blogs where they talk about all sorts of intimate family details. Not me. People know my daughter is autistic and have read some anecdotes about her with all identifying info removed (for example, you can't tell what school she goes to from any of my posts). I don't and will never blog.

Good to be careful. I have my FB on private; all you can see (if you're not my "friend") is my name, profile picture, and the little "Add as Friend" button.
Having said that, I'm not paranoid. I just don't want random people looking at my stuff.

Being careful is good, but not everyone needs to be. *shrug*

When I had Facebook I got really irritated at how FB seems to change around security unannounced. I got to checking weekly to see if they were adding any new features that by default would be set to 'public' or etc. I got rid of FB though and I haven't had Myspace since I was a teen. Social networking.... meh, risky and unfulfilling

What happened to freedom? -_-

I think work places are fire happy and like to hold anything against people for what they do in their personal lives. So the work rules now apply to when you are off work too?

Then pretty soon school will have policies that also apply to off school grounds too and then pretty soon children won't be allowed to throw snowballs at home because by the time they go to school after winter break, they are being punished for breaking the school rules for throwing snowballs in front of their home.

And of course online, people like to spy on other users and take things they write out of context so it's time to out smart them but using different user names. But of course people can still tell it's you just by what you say about yourself and your interests because the same people can go to other aspie forums than just this one and they can easily recognize you on other forums if you say things about yourself and they know you that well. But they didn't find you by google searching your name. They just happen to run into you on another forum but they can still read through your posts and take them out of context. Now if only places had features to turn off "view all posts by this user" so people can't stalk your posts.

I don't have Facebook, and my Flickr account doesn't have my name on it although it would be very easy to work out it was me if you knew me at all.