that can find almost anything you have ever said on the internet – and right then I became very conscious of not putting a lot of personal information out there.

http://www.mahalo.com/spokeo/

Certainly I don’t condone the behavior of any of the parties involved. As my aunt used to say, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

I think my point was addressing the issue of Internet privacy and the lack thereof. It’s my understanding, and correct me if I’m wrong, the information compiled on that website was in the public domain: twitter feeds, blog posts, and comments. And, I’m not condoning that. What I’m saying is that we (the average Joe Internet users) are going around posting seemingly innocuous information, like what restaurant we eat at (foursquare) or our home towns (our blogs), and then our opinion (on our favorite forum), and we think we have privacy. I’m not an Internet expert, but I don’t think pulling all those pieces together would take all that much effort. It’s scary how much of our own privacy we are relinquishing because we have the illusion of anonymity.

@clutterconqueror – It’s true that the Internet is not private and that is important to remember because sometimes things said online come back in ways the poster probably never expected. However, I do not think that posting one’s views publicly on the Internet(even posting them rudely on the Internet) gives anybody a right to paint a target on one’s person by posting real names, addresses and so on.

I would just like to say that this is a good reminder that the Internet is not private. If you post it, it’s out there forever for anyone and everyone to see. Anonymity is an illusion.

This is so true, and what we reiterate to children and teens when they start using the internet. While I am horrified at the outing of someone’s personal information, I believe that you have to own the words you put online. It is naive to think that only a small community is reading them and they don’t matter. It’s a huge big world outside your keyboard and you just never know who might be watching. Scary.

I totally sympathize with you about pen names. I wish I had kept my maiden name for professional use.

I find that no matter the issue whether it’s at AAR, DA, SBTR or GR it’s always the same people who light it up. I respect them for their comments and often agree. It’s good to mix it up, but civility is of utmost importance and name calling defeats the purpose of good discussion. Feelings get hurt. People leave and don’t come back. Not good.
Some are better at debate and those who aren’t often resort to abuse when they can’t maintain their argument during heated discussions. It’s a talent to debate well verbally even more so in writing.

The recent backlash against Sandy’s “serious reader” comment really burnt me up. The thread became mean and petty and (to me) blown out of proportion. I am always amazed at what gets people going.

I look forward to the comment part of the blogs I read. I’ve learned about new authors, new ideas and issues or alternative ways of looking at issues and interesting web sites too. Reading blogs like AAR have opened up so much for me as a reader and a woman in this digital age. Until recently I had no idea about the “Streisand Effect” and many other things about the web community that were unknown to me. It’s fascinating, not always pleasant but fascinating just the same.

I have had a recent problem with sock puppets on blogs – people posing as someone else in order to agree with themselves – that I’ve let go. Since they are fraudulent posts, I’m sorry I did that now. I won’t again.