April 11, 2008
I know… kind of a harsh title to this post, but for those of us who blog about our daily money making activities or ANY activities on the web, we can expose ourselves without even realizing it!
Yesterday, I walked out to cut my lawn and right there in my driveway was a small black camera case. On the outside of the case in BIG BOLD letters it said “REWARD Call 704….” with the full phone number. I literally stood there for a full 2-3 minutes trying to figure out how the hell it got into my driveway and what I was going to to do with it. Was it a joke? Was there pictures of ME on there and it was some method of blackmail? Was it a bomb? (I know… too much thinking!) Well… turns out I had a contractor over to the house the night before to give me an estimate on a small project and it was his camera, a quick phone call to him and now he has to reduce his price by at least the cost of the camera right?
It was during that 2-3 minutes of dumbfounded questioning that I realized… I am exposed!
My home is exposed, my kids are exposed, my wife is exposed, all my belongings are exposed! I looked over at my car and realized I posted a picture of it on the web… anyone want a nice new car? A simple whois lookup tells you where it is! To make it worse, I have a vanity plate on my car with a domain name on it that leads right to this blog… Sure, I get about 5 hits on it every day and sponsor a ball team with the same domain, but what if I was driving in front of some unscrupulous, tech-saavy driver who wanted it more than I do? Again, a quick whois tells them exactly where they can come get it.
We all get caught up in getting personal with our blog readers - it is part of what makes blogging so interesting. The ability to make that one to one connection with the author and readers. It is also the one single thing that compromises our own security!
These are just a few small examples of how I exposed myself, my family, and my home without even realizing it!
What was much more surprising to me was when I visited MANY of the top blogs I read each day… ran a whois on them and got physical street addresses. Just for kicks, I searched several of them and found posts about being out of town, being on vacation, attending affiliate summit, etc etc… essentially all of these top bloggers also exposed themselves without even realizing it! I am not going to post any specific references, but just go to one of your favorite blogs and search for the word vacation or any other terms that are common with being away!
6 Simple Things to Protect Yourself from being Exposed
To start with, we have too many domains to go back and make them all private. I do not want to spend the time or money on making all of them private, so what else can I do?
Are YOU Exposed? - I suggest trying this yourself…
Again, I have to say I was truly shocked at just how exposed we really are! I visited the list of Top 100 Make Money Online Blogs over at 45n5.com. If you have never visited the list.. it is a great resource of endless reading. I randomly chose several blogs, looked at the whois info and located registered addresses in residential areas on at least 2 out of 5. On those that did not list public info in whois, I was able to find a few by looking at 411 .com and searching a city for the name of the blogger!
Bottom line - think twice before you post about your upcoming trip, night out on the town, conventions or summits you may be attending etc. You never know who is reading…
If you like it - stumble it! I think everyone will benefit reading this!
How do you protect yourself?
Mark
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16 Responses to “A Warning about Blogging - Protect yourself from Yourself!”
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Dude, this a great post and a great reminder!! We can never be careful enough, ESPECIALLY with all the technology available today! Kinda scarey huh?
why don’t you just use domain proxy
http://domainsbyproxy.com/
works for most people, saves money on PO boxes etc
I do anonymous registrations and never talk about my personal life.
Thank you so much Mark! I am new to the world of blogging…this is invaluable information. It’s funny I have a friend on Facebook who travels the world with her job sure enough she advertises exactly where she is at any given moment. There is being social and then there is being stupid.
Hi Mark,
Congrats on the title of your post as it draw me right away to your blog - great one really - 10+ marketing in action :)
As for your warning, it might be correct, however it sounds a tid-bit over paranoid to me. Or maybe in the US there are far more people willing to harm someone than we have in The Netherlands? Some of my domains are protected and some are not. I will consider renting a PO box perhaps, not sure yet though.
Your blog is great and I am following it, and will continue to do so :)
Have a great weekend!
Too bad there isn’t a way to change your privacy with WHOIS directly without having to pay extra for it at GoDaddy. I switched to GoDaddy because I could get cheaper domains, but think I’ll go back to Bluehost (where my sites are all hosted) who gives you the option of privacy for free (new domains all at $9.99), if I’m remembering correctly.
Although it’s probably cheaper in the long run to do what you suggested Mark, and just get a P.O. Box for $50/year instead of paying extra for privacy on all those domains.
I always did privacy registration, but then got slack about it when other people said they didn’t have any issues with being public. Probably the majority of people don’t have any problems, but you never know.
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you!
An ounce of prevention…
@ All -
I guess it really hit home for me when I looked over at my car and saw the license plate on it… I walked into the house and ran a whois on the domain. Name, Address, Phone… everything was right there, even a link to a google map! LOL
The timing on this post was prompted by the fact that Kim and I are planning a vacation soon. We have the dates picked… we even have the hotel booked. I was thinking of posting on here asking for a series of guest bloggers for the week of: XXXX….XXXXX you get the picture.
It was like a lightbulb!
Mark
Great post and I have used a UPS private mail box for years but not for the reasons you layed out. I do travel a lot and the USPS people just seemed not to get it right :) So I went with Mail Boxes Etc which sold to the UPS stores.
I have to tell long lost relatives if you come to visit call, cause if you go by the address you sent the Christmas Card to you’ll end up at a store front :)
You gave all of us food for thought!
Thanks
Keith
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I think that this was a great post. Too many of us go through life with blinders on, not realizing how easy it is to locate someone. I wouldn’t call it being paranoid, but a little extra caution never hurt anyone.
I was a police officer in a former life, and have done computer forensics from time to time, and still don’t take the precautions I should. It’s a case of the “it’ll never happen to me attitude”, and it’s not a good one to have.
Phil
You brought some very good points- we post personal info about ourselves all the time w/o giving it a thought!
I will definitely be more conscious of what I enter on different sites and on twiiter, and also spread the info to others- esp on twitter where people are tweeting about their vacations or outings.
Thanks for enlightening me.
Wow this makes a person think.
Thanks for sharing.
I guess Sharing one’s name is all people really need.
I read this when it came out and certainly realized the fullness of it if someone decided to proceed that way . .but then got a chill when I was looking at my stats and the whois directory was listed in there and sure enough all my info is right there . . now. . in my mind that would mean that the whois directory is looking into my site . . (which doesn’t make sense) . ..and not that someone looked into the whois directory to see who owned the domain name . .. but wanted to verify this . . incase you were aware of it. thanks
Another tip is to Google your phone number. You may find that it actually comes up with your home address on the first page of the search results. You can request for Google to de-list it.
Thanks for this post Mark, you certainly did make me stop and think and thank to Sonia for posting about Blue Host, I did not know they did that and have just now gone and changed mine over to private.
Cheers guys
Sue