Are we really anonymous here?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Feanaro_s_Wife
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However, in the past couple of months, I’ve been stalked, and now I’m posting a lot less personal information. My stalker has my e-mail addresses (my two primary ones) and had my phone number before I changed it. My stalker has contacted me repeatedly on a social networking site, creating new accounts every time I block an old one. I feel relatively safe here, since nobody in real life knows I post here, and I have only used my real first name twice, in private messages. However, I’m being a lot more careful about posting anything that could be used to identify me.
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Dang, what did he want?
 
BamaRider said:
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Dang, what did he want?
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It’s my boyfriend’s ex-wife that’s doing it. She’s mad about the custody battle, but I figure she mostly wants to scare me. When she phoned me at first, I listened to her without replying, and she never said anything meaningful, just ranted and raved incoherently. Then I ignored her calls, and hung up if she called me from another number. Then I changed my phone number.

She e-mails me two or three times a week. Sometimes she opens accounts in my boyfriend’s name and sends me messages from them. I have never responded to an e-mail from her. There’s really nothing to reply to anyway.

It does scare me, though, so if that’s what she’s trying to do, she’s succeeding. However, I’m saving all the e-mails for my boyfriend’s lawyers, including the threatening ones, and I’ll let the courts answer for me.
 
hmm…I don’t care either way.

I’m not very anonymous. I’ve said thigns here that if someone else saw, it may actually HELP things. Simply because they saw how I truly felt and saw the general concensus supprting my decision.

Of course I’ve even given these people my CAF user-name. They could find me if they wanted!

Yeah, so I don’t care one way or the other.
 
I have recognized people here that I’ve known IRL and they likewise recognized me. I don’t care that much. I try to be fairly open and honest about my life. It was different when I was living with my parents, though. There were a few times when other homeschooling parents tracked down me and my sister’s online activities, printed them up, and passed them on to the rest of the homeschooling group or our pastor as a warning about my family. You can never overestimate the lengths people will go to when they want to pry into someone else’s life.
 
I might be too paranoid or something…living in Florida can do that to a person…lol, but I’m not a fan of posting pics of kids on here. I see many do it, and I love seeing pics of others’ kids, etc…but, it is a little scary out there, and you just never know who is lurking on the internet. Just my two cents.
 
as much as I enjoy the shameless pix threads, I would never allow pix of my minor children or grandchildren to go out on the web, but with so many of my relatives in the intenet security industry, it scares me. I also think, in view of that, it is naive to assume the internet is anonymous.

I also on principle don’t believe in “anonymously” sharing personal information about someone which would come under the description of detraction if I were speaking to you in person about someone we both know.

here I operate on the assumption that anyone who knows me “in person” could probably recognize me here, and work on that basis, and don’t say here what I would not say “in the clear”
 
I dunno, a picture without any personal information is not of much use. It is a whole lot riskier walking through the mall, where you know perverts are subject to hang out.

I think you’re ok as long as you use just a little caution. As far as names, well its no secret my wife’s name is Debbie, we’ve been married 32 years LOL…

I don’t know anybody here personaly, but I know 10,000 here in my hometown after living here for 40+ years. I’m a lot more worried about one of them goin postal than one of y’all. :cool:
 
whatevergirl said:
I might be too paranoid or something…living in Florida can do that to a person…lol, but I’m not a fan of posting pics of kids on here. I see many do it, and I love seeing pics of others’ kids, etc…but, it is a little scary out there, and you just never know who is lurking on the internet. Just my two cents.
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I can vouch for this, from the old ‘shocking’ thread I know what lots of different posters look like, but there’s still a blank for you WG 😛

I suppose you are only as anonymous as the information you give, and posting pictures stops any real anonymity.

At the same time, unless you really fear for your safety, why would you want to remain completely anonymous? Getting to know others is part of the fun part of CAF, no? Imagine how dire it would be if all the threads were totally objective / abstract and you never knew anything about other posters.

I’ve only refrained from pictures, because my email address could be used to find me on CAF, and I like to have someplace I can talk without friends / family knowing it is definitely me. 😉
 
**I don’t mind the open discussion, so please continue…but what was on MY mind when i posted wasn’t an issue of safety but more of…prudence maybe?

Like if I were to ask a question about marriage. Let’s say I have a friend who is having marital problems and I want to know how to help her. In order to get decent advice I would have to post a bit about the situation. No names of course and nothing that would publicly identify the couple… but if my friend were to browse CAF she would surely recognize some elements of my online “persona” and KNOW I was talking about her. So, even though she would not be “exposed” I can’t help but think that no one would like to be talked about over the internet…but maybe I’m wrong?

Also, what if I wanted to get advice for a situation in my own life? Even if it is not too personal of a subject, I have in laws (including a nephew) that belong to CAF (and who knows how many others who may just lurk) that I wouldn’t want to know all of my personal business.

So, the easy answer would be to “just not post personal stuff”…I know. But I sure miss the days of being a newbie and being able to ask anything I wanted. Like all of the silly questions I asked before converting that really highlighted my ignorance of the Catholic faith:o.

But it’s a trade off that is worth it as I feel that, while I have lost my anonymity, I have gained many friends here. And I don’t want my friends to think badly of me so that will have a big impact on what I post.

That is what was on my mind…**
 
Feanaro_s_Wife said:
**I don’t mind the open discussion, so please continue…but what was on MY mind when i posted wasn’t an issue of safety but more of…prudence maybe?

Like if I were to ask a question about marriage. Let’s say I have a friend who is having marital problems and I want to know how to help her. In order to get decent advice I would have to post a bit about the situation. No names of course and nothing that would publicly identify the couple… but if my friend were to browse CAF she would surely recognize some elements of my online “persona” and KNOW I was talking about her. So, even though she would not be “exposed” I can’t help but think that no one would like to be talked about over the internet…but maybe I’m wrong?

Also, what if I wanted to get advice for a situation in my own life? Even if it is not too personal of a subject, I have in laws (including a nephew) that belong to CAF (and who knows how many others who may just lurk) that I wouldn’t want to know all of my personal business.

So, the easy answer would be to “just not post personal stuff”…I know. But I sure miss the days of being a newbie and being able to ask anything I wanted. Like all of the silly questions I asked before converting that really highlighted my ignorance of the Catholic faith:o.

But it’s a trade off that is worth it as I feel that, while I have lost my anonymity, I have gained many friends here. And I don’t want my friends to think badly of me so that will have a big impact on what I post.

That is what was on my mind…**
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You (we) could always have a second account that is completely anonymous for really personal questions, and then do all your ‘chatting’ from your main account.

When I get round to it, I think I’d like to retire my ‘magic’ username and start afresh, since there are a lot of posts I’d prefer private, and over the last few years I’ve been posting more and more personal stuff. If one of our ‘good’ IRL friends had my email, and went through all my posts, they would pretty much know it was me, and there are a few personal posts that I just wouldn’t want them to know, so I have to agree with you about liking the ‘newbie’ anonymity.

I think I’ll give myself a target to get the new username sorted by the end of the weekend. I think I will miss having a boatload of posts under my belt though 😃
 
Feanaro_s_Wife said:
**Do you think that most posters here are anonymous enough for it to be ok to say things about our spouses we don’t want them to know, talk about our neighbors or friends, or generally say things under the guise of being anonymous that we would never dream of saying to a “real” person?

I know when i first joined CAF I was very anonymous. No real names, no location, nothing to identify me at all. But after years here people have seen family pics, know the name of my daughter and my pets, and know where (approx) I live.

So I no longer feel comfortable expressing my opinions and views on things that I wouldn’t want people who know me to find out. Even people I am sure wouldn’t see my posts…you never know when they might pop on to CAF “just to see what it’s all about” and find posts where they recognize themselves being talked about! That would be horrible!!!

So, how anonymous are YOU?

p.s kind of makes me glad for the big CAF crash that happened awhile back. Now any record of my old “anonymous” posts is lost in cyberspace;)
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LOL I am sorry I have to see the humor in it…and you are correct…there are many times when I post my personal ideas and life that I feel that someone knows me or something you know? And then it’s like oh oh what if?! lol…but oh well gotta express myself and if they don’t like it that’s on them… I mean I would probably still have to explain myself but geesh…🤷
 
Feanaro_s_Wife said:
I don’t mind the open discussion, so please continue…but what was on MY mind when i posted wasn’t an issue of safety but more of…prudence maybe?
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Because I am not annonomous here by any means, I do NOT talk about personal marriage or family issues, work or friends. I do talk about my own personal experiences a lot (probably more than I should :o ) but I’ve always been very transparent when it comes to stuff like that anyway. But when it comes to other people I stay away from that. It’s just not fair to them to talk about their personal business on a public forum.

There is/was a discussion by one member about some extremely personal details about her adult son’s life, including photos, which I found totally shocking. I would never ever do this to another person, I feel it is a complete violation of their privacy.

My DH always says - no one is anonymous on the internet. Any skilled reseacher/internet sluth can find out who you are if you just talk long enough. 😉

~Liza
 
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