Privacy on the internet is a very important issue, one that becomes more and more important as services like Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook come more and more into the public eye. As a blogger and podcaster, I give up a certain amount of this privacy, but I completely control the amount of information that gets out about me through these avenues. The second I get within 2KM of my house, all geotracking services are completely shut off. Every single one of my domains is registered through Dreamhost, giving me utter privacy. I think very hard about personal details I give out on View From The Quad and this blog, I separate my “personal” email address and my “work” one, and most importantly, I ensure that if anybody has a problem with how I run VFTQ or Scodio, they have easy ways of contacting me to talk about it and share their concerns. This allows for two things. One, if somebody has a way I can do something better, they can let me knowm and Two, people don’t have the need to track me down in meatspace and start talking to me there.

This has happened only once before, and it was involving the CTYIwiki project, the wiki that I founded for CTYI attendees, which has since been handed on to a friend after it was hacked and had its database wiped. One or two people who didn’t quite understand how a wiki worked decided to track down phone numbers and private email addresses for people involved deep in the CTYIwiki project, and started making phonecalls. They didn’t like some quotes that were attributed to them. I clearly explained how they could remove the quotes if they so wished, and everything was back to normal.

So I’m good at handling stuff that I have control over. If you run a blog, podcast or any type of website, I bet you are too.

But what about the stuff that you have no control over?

I was recently made aware (read: was given a blind link that I “should really check out”) of a photograph of me and a good friend, that was on a certain website I have had dealings with in the past (read: I got them kicked off two webhosts due to their unauthorized use of my intellectual property. The only time the DMCA works for the little guy) and on this photo, there was a tirade of people speculating as to if I was the boyfriend of this good friend of mine. The general theory was that while there was a little chance we were a couple, she would never go for somebody as ugly as the guy in the photo. OK, so I may have been a little sunburnt at the time. (Needless to say, the guy/girl who sent me the email was chastised, then blocked from contacting me again.)

One thing I have developed over time is a fairly thick skin. If you are a longtime VFTQ listener, you know how I like to treat hatemail. I read it on the show and make fun of it, sometimes sparking another piece of hatemail. Which gets read on the show. If you were a friend of mine on Facebook, before I removed myself from that time-cancer for the Leaving Cert, you probably saw me dealing with people who strongly disliked my habit of posting links about religious people doing mindbogglingly stupid things due to their faith. I have a public post on my wall telling me that I am going to get sodomized with a trident while my flesh is  bubbling off my bones and I’m being fried alive for the rest of eternity? Just another day in my life as a skeptic (I think I still have screenshots of that conversation lying around here somewhere, actually). I dealt with hatemail regarding the CTYIwiki project by posting it on a public page, along with details of who sent it to me, if I had them. Ridicule, for me, is the best way of stopping these things from getting to me. I have friends who develop both websites and applications who have dealt with people who have harassed them, claiming that they will never be good at what they do, they will never have a career and they will never finish an application. Most of these people are now wondrously successful, working with companies, making thousands off iPhone (and iPad, now, I suppose) apps and freelancing. This hate never stopped them. Why should it stop me?

Now, I am quite careful about what I consider hatemail. If somebody is simply criticizing what I’m doing, I don’t treat this as hatemail. Sadly, in the past, one of my favorite podcasters has taken emails that he has received about how he conducts himself on his show VS how people he complains about conduct themselves, and he has read them out on the show, in a whingey voice, and then torn into the writers, listing off their email addresses. This strikes me as misguided. Nowhere did any of these emails say that they were going to kill him, they just pointed out a possible hypocrisy in how he was conducting himself. But sure, if that is how he deals with it, that’s how he deals with it. But never be scared to criticize something I do, as unless you are an utter asswipe, you won’t hear me slagging you off by name in VFTQ.

However, this message board sort of did get to me, and not for the usual reasons. Not because they made derogatory remarks. I can deal with those. I leave myself pretty much open to them, with the content on VFTQ, posting of my own fiction and the likes. I never EVER get it from people I know or people who have chosen to follow what I do. What got me is that these people, people who I don’t know and people who none of my friends knew were making horrible remarks based on not one, but three pictures they had dug up of me with various other friends, but had started making judgments on my reasons for being friends with the aforementioned friend. I have no inbuilt defense against this. These are not people I can call out “on air”, and I’m sure as hell not making an account on this disgusting privacy invasion website to give them a piece of my mind. However, they had found my name, had found that I do View From The Quad and had most likely found out about this blog. So maybe one or two of them will read about this here.

Cyber-bullying, to use a shitty term conjured up by some HR department somewhere, is becoming more and more prevalent in today’s world of anonymity and connectivity. Phonecalls, emails, texts, you are only a button click away from somebody who wants to make your life pretty miserable. But these people weren’t cyber-bullying anybody. There were just discoursing, chatting between themselves. Is that why it got to me?

Maybe it is. And why did I decide to open myself even more to attack, by writing a blog post about it? Who knows. But if somebody gives me grief here, I have a working email address for them. And an IP. Which can lead to an address. And let me tell you, a prime cut of cod starts to smell after it has been in the postal system for a day or two.

But I’ll tell you something. I bet they are just jealous of what their imagination provides.

Ignorance isn’t ALWAYS bliss, after all.

Tags: bullying, facebook, foursquare, privacy, twitter

Let’s face it, we all thought Tweetie 2 was abandonware, but with the announcement on Macheist that a private bate is opening up soon for those who bought the bundle, it will finally see the light of day!

Now, a while back I moved away from the whole Tweetie system, iPhone app and Mac application, and over to Echofon. I paid for the full iPhone version and have been beta testing the Mac version, and let me tell you, it is pretty much wonderful. So here is a list of things Tweetie 2 needs to do for me to move back over blindly. (I will probably try it out for a few days either way, but ticking some of the boxes here would make the choice easier.)

1. Syncing between the iPhone and Mac applications. This is one of thise features that I didn’t know I needed until I found it with Echofon. It’s pretty wondeful, and allows you to pick up exactly where you left off on either your Mac or Iphone without having to do endless scrolling. This should also work across all the Macs you own.

2. All the new Twitter features like RTs, Lists, geotagging and such

3. Push updates on the iPhone. I know it’s not a feature of a Mac application, but this will be important for bringing me back into the whole Tweetie ecosystem.

4. We should be able to log into bit.ly and such so that shortened links go into our bit.ly accounts.

So there are my top four wants for Tweetie 2. I suppose I will have to wait until next month when I hopefully get into the beta like Macheist said I would. Hopefully they have learnt from the Cha-Ching mess though. Several years later I’m still awaiting my beta for that.

Tags: Mac, tweetie, twitter