This post was written by Jennifer
My Phone Number is Unlisted
As a blogger, do you ever feel sort of odd that anyone and everyone from your past and present can find you, learn all about your current life, and figure out how to contact you easily, with just a click of their mouse?
I do a little. My phone number really is unlisted. I have one family member who I’d like to avoid, so I’m unlisted. I’d rather she not know how to contact me, and I especially don’t want her knowing where I live. However, recently, someone from my past did contact me, and it made me realize that as a blogger, an unlisted phone number is small change; I’m just not that hard to find.
The person who contacted me was not some good pal I had back in the day either, or some cute story like a cool ex boyfriend looking me up, it was someone I hadn’t seen since the age of maybe 12, and I could have gone the rest of my life with it that way.
The person who contacted me knew a lot about me, which is not that hard a task if you know how to use Google. At this point, I’ve been blogging and doing web copy for so long, that I’m running pages and pages long on search engines. Obviously I’m not as popular a search as some folks are, but I’m around enough that you can learn a lot about me with one search. It felt weird to know this person knew all about me, but that I knew nothing about her.
So, how do you deal with being all over the web? Here’s what I will and won’t do online:
I will:
- Use my full name.
- Say the state I live in.
- Share pictures or videos of my world - so long as they don’t give away my street sign or the front of my house or something.
- Talk about my life pretty honestly (see below for what I won’t discuss).
- Share my opinions, even if I think others might not agree. That’s blogging folks; also, I’m like that in the real offline world too so…
I won’t:
- Give my phone number anywhere online.
- Give my address.
- Give random personal info - bank accounts, social security, etc.
- Name exact places I’m going - i.e. I’ll say, “My son and I are taking off to the park” but not, “My son and I are taking off to Bush Park in downtown Salem, Oregon.”
- Use full names of other people I know in my offline world - either past or present. That’s not cool. For example, I might say, “I used to have this friend named Bob, he was awesome…” but not, “I have this friend Bob Brown in Albuquerque who works at…” That’s not my info to give. I know some bloggers do share info like this, but it makes me uncomfortable.
- Share everything: For example, I won’t blog major family issues. I’ll say, “I don’t like this person” or “I try to avoid so and so” but I’d never say, “My son’s dad cheated on me with ten girls and spent three years addicted to the sauce” - he didn’t, by the way, but you see what I mean. Why get so personal? Yeah, I get miffed with the ex, but being all vindictive online is sort of petty and lame in my opinion. Again, I know bloggers who will give everything away, but talking serious smack about people (ex evil mother-in-law excluded) is just not something I do.
What it all comes down to:
I don’t have many past demons. If I did, it’s very likely I wouldn’t be working online. I’ve been pretty lucky in that I don’t have a bunch of ex mates I parted badly with. Except for one early overly dramatic high school boyfriend, I always got along pretty well with an ex after a break up. I don’t have any weird old friend dramas to deal with or enemy co-workers from past jobs. All in all, I can only think of one or two people from my past who I’d rather not hear from, and there’s nothing I’m trying to keep hidden in my past (like say, illegal activity).
If you’re considering blogging full-time, it might be smart to consider your past and future contacts and behaviors. If your past is littered with oodles of people you’d rather not hear from, or you’ve done super shady stuff; stuff that you don’t want broadcast online, then blogging might not be for you. If you’re uncomfortable being easy to find, then blogging is absolutely not for you.
What do you think? Are you uncomfortable with the thought of being all over the Internet and easy to find? AND how do you keep your life somewhat your own, even if you have an online presence?
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10 Responses to “My Phone Number is Unlisted”
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Unfortunately, the fact is that you already are easy to find through the Internet. You and everybody else, whether they’ve ever ventured online or not. Just type “people search” into Google and you will find sites that can pull up your address, phone number, birth date, etc., using only your name. Some even link to a map showing where you live. And for a price, those services will sell your public records.
Personally, I find it disturbing and am somewhat amazed that there isn’t more of an uproar about it.
That’s not to say you should spill extra information online, but we are living in an age where all kinds of personal information is out there for the grabbing.
I think people are pretty at risk too - which is why I’m shocked when people say they won’t say their birthday or state, but will say their name; which in some cases is all you need to find out stuff.
However, I’ve read more than one article calling out most of those online people finder sites as fakes, so I wouldn’t assume people could find out my phone number from one. I’ll have to see if I can find it, but in this one post I read, the blogger had gotten some email from an ex (or something like that) so he decided to see just how easy it would be to find himself using those online sites.
He used many of the paid ones, asking about his own name, and nothing he got back was correct, or even about him. So, those online sites, I’m thinking, are mostly scams. But, I’ve never used one personally, so I can’t know for sure. I do know there’s no one I’d pay $ to hunt down, that’s a little bizarre.
Lots of my details are public thanks to gov.uk, so I just try to direct random enquiries to the places that I can deal with them most efficiently. I have a telephone number in my sig still, for example.
I’m still a bit cagey about detailing where I’m going and try to avoid naming other people in my life without their permission.
A few years ago someone who didn’t like something I said on a messageboard began to cyber harass me and post my personal information to the comments on my blog and on public forums. He found it on Google.
Thankfully, he didn’t post my address (but said he was looking for it), my husband and son’s names, my phone number (but he did find an old cell phone number and more. I contacted his ISP and he was kicked to the curb but it was an important lesson to be careful what you put out there.
This is one of the reasons why I always refer to my son as The Boy and my husband as Mr. Ng. It’s also why I tell people I live in the Northeast or East Coast rather than my town. It’s a scary, scary world. Unfortunately online we can judge people only on how they write and treat us online. We can’t really see how they act as we do in the real world.
I wrote about this on my blog back in May before I got married, and was deciding whether to continue with my writing under my old last name or my new one. I ultimately decided to go with my new name because, in high school, I didn’t think about things like this and said some stupid things on the internet. Nothing terrible, but certainly nothing I’d want a potential client to see! I had a pretty unique name too, so there was no real way I could pass it off as being someone else.
@Deb - that sucks. Talk about stalking. I can’t believe some people are so lame. You’d think they had something better to do than harass folks like that. I think that we are judged by how we write, so I do try to be semi-careful, but too careful as a blogger is dull to me, so I’m not overly careful. I try to just blog like I talk, and so far I’ve had few issues with blog harassment. Although, I have had a few blog stalkers. Which is another story.
@Samantha I think that all of us do some dumb things as teens. If you’re going to work online, and you did some of those dumb things online, another name can work well to keep potential clients from finding out about your past.
You make several good points here. I take steps to keep some information private - names of family members, my exact whereabouts, where I work, etc. - but I know damned well that, thanks to my beloved interwebs, that’s nearly *impossible*.
In recent years, this has kept me from discussing really emotional issues when blogging, even when I needed to get them off my chest, because it meant exposing info that didn’t need to be exposed. I tend to view anything I post as being equivalent to a tattoo - permanent and indelible. For example, a fight with my sweetie doesn’t get to live forever because I posted some pissy rant about it. I feel a certain responsibility to keep personal issues off my site.
Last year, as part of a mutually-inflicted practical joke, a friend of mine sent me an email in which he jokingly threatened to send someone to my house. Attached to the email was a Google Map picture of my house. I wasn’t upset that he’d sent the picture - it was part of the joke - but I was freaked for a moment about the fact that *anyone* could do what he’d done. It was illuminating, to say the least.
It’s changed the way I view my whole life, not just my internet presence. I take more personal precautions as a result, in RL as well as on the web. It’s the price we pay for doing what we do.
I don’t say my city either, but I’ve had readers figure it out from zoo photos I took. Not that there was a sign- but they recognized the animals! : ) Yeah, they were keepers.
Glad to read your post as it’s something I’ve been pondering since starting my blog. Early on, I decided to use pics and first names, as I also use the blog to communicate to long distance friends about what’s up. It seemed too difficult to maintain both private and personal repositories of information, especially with a new baby.
I realize that some people don’t reveal this much information out of respect for their kids, but it’s a call I made. However I decided not to use our last name, and I actually do the same with my emails and public social networking (except LinkedIn and Facebook) as I use the same callname for all my accounts. What I decided was this: I wouldn’t place my full name outwardly on anything linked to my blog (and my kids pics), but I also wouldn’t stress out over it and get OCD, as it were. On some level, I guess there is a risk to everything that we do, and I would go crazy trying to protect myself completely.
It’s good to hear another perspective on this, though. Thanks for the thoughtful post!
@Maria “I tend to view anything I post as being equivalent to a tattoo - permanent and indelible.” That’s what I try to think. If someone is lame in an annoying way or doing something idiotic, I usually will blog it. But to me there’s a big difference between someone being annoying and say, a major issue like someone having a drinking or gambling problem. I won’t blog stuff like that. I can’t take it back, and also the way I see it, if something I write might prevent someone from finding work, or a new mate, that’s not cool - no matter how mad I might be deep down about something. If all that makes sense
@Peggy REALLY! That is so weird. Are zoo keepers really leaving comments! Too funny.
@hopealso of hippie dippie bébé (long name). I know pro bloggers who don’t use their last name. I do, but I also used my full name in mags, proposals, and other stuff, so it was not so big a leap decision for me. I also know people who are so careful about their kids names but my son is so much a part of my world that it’d be hard for me to blog pro, and never mention him.
Like you, I just made the decision not to get all mental about people knowing me. I’m careful, but just as many people could steal my info from mail, old colleges, or hospital records (I worked at a hospital - and you won’t believe what people will look up). I try not to worry.