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The Internet is kind of like the dating
scene. We want to have fun, we want
people to know that we're crazy wonderful people, but we don't necessarily want
to spill our innermost secrets to the world at large. Still, sometimes we're oddly tempted. Sometimes stuff gets out that we would really
rather not. And just like my time in Northwesterns
dating scene, a lot of things have happened to me on the Internet that I kind
of wish hadn't. I've been stalked on Facebook, creeped out on MySpace, cussed out on Xanga,
kicked out of chat rooms, and constantly mistaken for different Nathan Edwardses thanks to my eponymous Gmail
address. Yet I keep coming back. And so do you, unless you're one of the very
few people who participate in real life without feeling the urge to discuss,
dissect, and disseminate detailed information on it on the Internet tubes.
Why
do I have the urge to post my entire music-listening history on Last.fm, my crappy poetry on Xanga,
my embarrassing photographs, quirky fetishes, hook-up history, favorite quotes,
contact information, and the name of my hypothetical firstborn child on Facebook? Why can't
I just be cool like, well, I guess only one of my friends and disavow Facebook entirely, especially now that five younger cousins
and two younger siblings are on it and my carefully-constructed fa�de of
innocence is in danger of being revealed for the sham it is? Why don't we all just realize it was a bad
idea from the get-go?
Let's look at the Web that
was. In the beginning was the Internet,
and lo, it was a cozy sprawl of BBS and Usenet groups, wherein the elite (or
university students with mainframe time) could converse in the rarified air of
an Internet without furries, drooling idiots, or
ubiquitous porn. Well, maybe the
porn. People often used their real names
because, hey, we're all grown-ups here. As
the Web became more widespread, a trend towards anonymity grew, and names like DreadDarkLord1979
and CoUnTrYgUrL20044523141 suddenly became the norm. This was a time of message boards, AOL and
CompuServe and the like, when it didn't so much matter who you were as what
type of person you are.
Then around 2000 came
the advent of self-publishingsites like LiveJournal
and Xanga and OpenDiary
foretold the more-recent reprehensible rise of blogger
culture. Suddenly everyone assumed that
everything about themselves was fascinating to the
world at large. Vanity sites, full
disclosure, online quizzes, and friends lists all somehow became part of our
cultural lexicon.
Most recently, a crop of
social-networking sites (MySpace, Facebook
and the Web 2.0 sitesFlickr, Last.fm
etc) has popped up. Many of these are
tied in some way to your offline identity.
MySpace allows your friends to search for you
via your real name, and your Facebook account is
inextricably linked to your university or work email address. And what do we do on these sites? We list hobbies, interests, feelings,
opinions, sordid stories, photographs, "Which Buffy Character Are
You?" quizzes and current moods to the Net at large.
We also link to our other Web
identities the ones we think are anonymous - blogs, photo
albums, screen names, and so forth. And
how many of us use one favored username for everything? Besides me, I mean. Suddenly, if we're not
careful, we find our cherished user names, screen names, journals and real
names are just a Google search away from being revealed. Someones bound to connect the dots,
unlocking all the horrible secrets contained therein.
That anonymous blogging identity of yours might just be linked back to
your real name on Facebook, which is linked to your
AIM profile, and then what's to stop your grandmother from finding out what you
really think of her?
Thanksgiving just got a little more awkward. Thanks to Google, finding dirt on people has
never been easier.
Many people don't get that
anything you put on the Internet can be potentially viewed by anyone. I have actually heard people say, I can't
believe he read my blog! or Oh my God, how did she get my screen name?! Come on, people. The Internet is a tool for finding
stuff. If you put things on it,
people might see them.
Now, I'm no stalker, but I do know
what Google is. A few months ago, I
ventured into the chatroom of one of my favorite webcomics. (I can't believe I just admitted that level of nerdishness.) In my
defense, I was sick as a dog and slightly delirious. Anyway. One room denizen caught my attention, and I
used IRC's whois tool to find out what she had to
say for herself. What do you know, her
real name popped up. I Googled it, and
the second result was her blog. I found
out she likes Borges. I love Borges. So
I mentioned to the room at large that I like Borges, and wham! Booted from the room. Now, loopy as I was, that's not necessarily
surprising. But was I really being a
creepy stalker if the information was handed to me on a silver platter? Whois and Google
are hardly esoteric hacker tools.
Heres another example, reversed this
time. I was stalked on Facebook by a person who saw my profile picture and decided
I was cute. Their deplorable taste, of
course, is another issue entirely. They
messaged me something random, I responded, forgetting that if you message
someone they can see your profile for up to a week. Based presumably on my other pictures
(shouldn't have tagged those ones of me in a dress), this person decided I
wouldn't be adverse to a series of increasingly-explicit flirtations. I really was.
I blocked them, only to have an even creepier IM from them waiting for
me the next morning: "Stupid fuck.
Just wait." I explained to
them that this was creepy. They
apologized. Eventually I unblocked them
from my Facebook and AIM. Within the week, this message: "Can you
accept my friendship? I miss drooling
over your pics."
So yeah. My fault for making my AIM
screen name visible to anyone who sees my profile.
People, I've decided, are idiots. Myself included. We
broadcast this information about ourselves, then flip out when other people
actually see it and use it. Last year,
our own women's club soccer team was suspended because they hazed their
freshmen. How'd they get caught? Somebody posted pictures of the proceedings
on Webshots, where they were found and re-posted by a
national website. Whoops. Students have been expelled from school or
suspended based on off-the-cuff remarks on their own websites. One of our own professors chewed out a
roomful of students because somebody created a group saying that a certain
class's midterm had raped them.
There's recently been a media panic about predators using MySpace to lure in their victims (I always get this mental
image of a cat typing to a team of mice).
Most recently, Facebook
implemented the NewsFeed feature, which took all the
hard work out of being a stalker. Now,
nearly everything your friends do on the 'book is sent straight to your Facebook home page.
What used to take hours to find out now takes seconds. Bob and Jenny broke up. Jim wrote a note. Megan is currently hungover. Julie posted a photo of your
ex-girlfriend. Brad commented on it. That bastard.
People (including me) freaked
out. Surely this information wasn't meant to
be so easy to find? It's not like we
posted it on an essentially public network!
Zuckerberg and the crew were quick to add more
privacy features, but a lot of people realized very quickly that friending everyone you know might not be the best
idea. Or maybe it was that you shouldn't
post stuff on the Internet you don't want everyone to see. I'm sure we learned something. Right? Anyway, now I think it's awesome.
You like the Internet. You like keeping your friends posted, and
seeing what your friends are up to. But
you presumably don't want bad things happening to you. So what to do, short of disappearing off the
Web entirely?
Facebook
has robust privacy features and 'limited profiles.' Set them as strictly as you dare, and don't
give out information on Facebook you wouldn't want
your arch-nemesis to get a hold of. But
remember, no matter how strictly you set your privacy, your friends can still
see everything in your profile. Look at your friends list. Remember everyone on it can see everything on
your profile, unless you specifically add them to the limited profile
list. Maybe consider cutting your list
down. Or maybe don't post stuff you
don't want your boss/girlfriend/mother to see.
Or do what I do: lie horribly. About everything.
I use a fake name and a
non-identifying photograph on MySpace. I don't use my real name on the Internet
anymore (although my most frequently-used user name, which I've used for almost
everything since 2002, leads back to my real information frighteningly easily).
Ultimately, you have to assume that
nothing on the Internet is private.
Everything is discoverable.
Assume that anything incriminating you put on the Internet will be
discovered, and by the worst possible person. It also doesn't hurt to remember that emails
and IM conversations are frequently logged by the other parties. Hear that, Mark Foley? Yay topical humor!
So be careful what you put out
there. Don't be an idiot. Protect
yourself. And then have fun. Because the Internet is like sex, only slightly
less awkward. Oh, and everyone at Northwestern
has the Internetbut other than that.
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