How private is your private life?

I think that we would all be amazed at how much information about us is available to anyone, Julia. Big Brother is truly here. Almost every detail of our personal lives can be tracked. Paranoid? Yeah, & justifyably so.....

Do you think anyone is looking? The bots? /seriously, search bots

I try really hard not to talk about my mother on the internet. I say whatever I say on the internet assuming it can be read by anybody.

That's a good practice, Peter.

Hi Julia!

My sister and other family members use facebook a lot.

She forwarded me some pictures and I told her that it's too much for me.

However reading this post of yours I finally created an account in facebook with your suggestions in privacy noted.

Went back to her E mail and couldn’t see her pictures.

So I sent her an email. I'll see later if I can get it to work.

I probably did something wrong

Take Care, Richard

Oh No! Well Richard, I hope it works out for you. Facebook is pretty handy.

I realised after I posted this that my sister needed to accept me first and she didn't have the time to do that yet, so maybe in the next few days

Cool - hope it works!

I only have my family on it and they have been using it for a few years or more. I'm just slow. But communications are working fine so far and I also sent a few pictures also ok.

I wont accept anyone except family there.

Thanks for the advice in the privacy section of facebook also.

I'm well aware that the internet is a broadcast medium and goes everywhere, so is a local area network, everything is broadcasted everywhere, therefore the equipment needs to make a selection as what the broadcast is and where it came from then the message is decoded and put together so we can read it.

Just think everything in those copper wires or fiber optic wire in reality goes everywhere and a selection is made in the receiver by the TCP/IP address then out of a bunch of 64 characters blocks the message for a single receiver, or you is built and put together for your computer. You just don’t realist that everything coming down your street from the cable company or the phone company is there filtered by the TCP/IP in a bunch of 64 character batches, from thousands or millions of others.

You could see them all, but you don't know how to do that and you don't have the equipment to do that, but the government does.

When I was working at Kaiser Permanente, I was one of a few that even knew that our ICP was Cal Tech, and that they could indeed do that but in reality didn't

You make a really good point. Everything passes through channels.

Well, if you post on Gather, all your posts end up on Google/Yahoo. So go ahead, seach for yourself!

True! I'd file that under "your own decisions about how you interact online."

Open questions that also fall under making decisions about how to use online tools like Gather: Do you use your name or a username? Are you a celebrity or expert? (i.e. the authors / etc who make appearances here) What do you share about your life, family, work or other personal information? Do you post photos?

You are absolutely right, Paul! Writers actually need to use every possible medium out there if they want to become successful, yet we are often more reclusive types by nature.

There are certain measures in place - privacy settings on Facebook, etc. - (disclaimer: I don't know how they work because I'm still fighting that one.) But once you put something out in cyberspace, I think it's pretty much there forever even though it might take a computer forensics expert to retrieve it. (Think: CHENEY'S EMAILS!!)

Common sense must prevail. Oh! And always always think twice before hitting "send" or "submit".