blog safety

so...a lot of you knew why i had to go private rather quickly.
you can back up and read previous posts, if you don't.
but i thought i would address blog safety briefly.
this is all my opinion, so do what you want.
if you have a public blog,
there are some precautions it would be wise to take.
i will start out with my advice for your blog content
and end with technical precautions you can take.


1. photos: in my opinion, intimate {read: bath or shots only a grandma wants to see} pictures of you or your kids should be kept private. either on a private blog or not posted at all if your blog is public. something i learned the hard way is creeps just save your pictures to their computer. so even if you delete that one particular post or picture that your statcounter tells you is being overly viewed, you can never get those pictures back that some creep is looking at. don't post a picture of your child in front of her school on the first day with the name of the school behind her. or pictures of local, neighborhood landmarks that could easily give away where you live. i posted a neighorhood shot of something a while back and some blogger who i've never seen since commented saying she did a little research and figured out from that picture which city i live in.

2. calendar: keep your calendar private. don't tell blogland your day to day schedule of going to this particular gym or this particular restaurant or this particular park with your kids or that you're leaving town from this day to this day. if so, you are asking for trouble.

3. personal information: keep your personal information personal. some bloggers don't even use their real names, some only use initials, some only use first names. please don't post your address, employment information, etc. if you have links on your sidebar with last names, switch them to first names only. if someone you know has you linked, ask them to remove your last name. make sure you educate those you blog with and your family. maybe you don't know it but your family or friends could be giving away your location and address and posting pictures of your house, etc.. don't use names of people you are reminiscing about, unless you are fine with them finding you. {i had an experience about a year ago where i was doing a meme and reminiscing about a girl in preschool. well, she turned up out of nowhere from googling her name and left me a nasty comment.} on that same vein, google yourself occasionally to see what comes up. be aware of what people can find on you.

4. tracking: add a sitemeter or statcounter to your blog. there are various kinds to choose from and they can be visible or invisible. i prefer statcounter. my favorite features show you which page is most popular and getting the most traffic and which blogs are linking to you and how people find your blog through google searching random words or phrases. {if you allow google to search}

5. search engines: in your blog settings, you can click the option NO to have search engines find your blog if you don't want people to find your blog or certain pages in your blog.

6. backup: even still, your blog is archived in the google index. meaning, even if you delete a certain post, it can still be found through the google cache. i went into the google webmasters site and inserted my web address and asked for google to delete my blog from the cache. it only took a couple of days. you can also insert code into the html of your blog to stop all indexing and block the robots, google or not, from spidering through your blog to find information.


i hope this was helpful..
leave me comments or send me an email
if i didn't cover something specifically
or if you have futher questions.
please practice safe blogging.
my issue last month wasn't a big one,
but it was enough to make me aware
and ultimately make changes.