Going Anon
I have been contemplating about going anonymous on the net. The reason: a little bit of privacy. By that I mean, I’ll still be blogging, but nothing private or personal here. The moment I put some personal stuff in this space, it’s up for grabs and I help add another piece of the puzzle. I’ve often wondered if having a blog with all the (authentic) credentials is good. It might be good for people that conduct their business or are associated with it in a way that might help them gain clients. But in my case, it’s an indulgence, a form of self-expression, a hobby and it has nothing to do with my work. Blogging, so far, hasn’t had an adverse affect on the way I live my life. But any personal info that’s disclosed is gone in the public domain for good, and I fear that I may be giving some room for the likes of ID-theft.
Thankfully, Google enabled nofollow attribute together with some of the major search engines last week. I have been trying it out on Google to see if my rank drops. I’ve tried this a couple of times and yes, I’m happy to note that Googlebot does what it promises. So, in accordance, I have these headers in my blog that shoo-away bots that respect Robot Exclusion protocol. Hence my header tags: content="noindex,nofollow" in the meta tag named robots seem to be doing the job.
In addition, WordPress, the software that powers my blog, has the ability to password protect posts of choice and, I’ve been doing that a lot lately especially on relatively private posts that I don’t think is appropriate for a public consumption. You might wonder why do I put it in the first place? Well, for one, convenience of being able to access from anywhere and yet being private.
Most of the private and personal images on the header roll are gone, and are replaced with some lovely landscape, scenic and abstract images that I’m happy to present. Also, I will not be pinging any of the popular services via Pingomatic.com. Pingbacks and Trackbacks are permanently disabled as I write this.
I’ll not be participating in any of the blog showcases or contests henceforth (the last one was the 2005 Bloggies, and I doubt it would have any adverse effect on my attempts in trying to be anonymous =)). I will continue to read good stuff that Bloggers produce these days. My choice of commenting on certain blogs that I read has been focused essentially on voicing an opinion, share some info that I have related to it or found it very interesting so I could write a comment in appreciation. While I continue to do that, please don’t take it personally if I don’t frequently.
I can understand the need to be anonymous. I made the shift after couple of months. Although I keep dropping hints about my identity and do not attempt to hide myself in emails, but I believe in the power of Google a bit too much to put it up on my blog.
Jan 25, 05 at 04:45Bringing down your Bio page should be considered as a priority now that you have decided to keep personal stuff away from public domain.
Jan 25, 05 at 17:57Patrix: Agree with you.
Jan 25, 05 at 21:27Suman: I’d still like to keep the bio, just the sensitive info like the address and phone no. removed :).
Ah! that’s a nice touch
Jan 26, 05 at 07:06