How to be safe on the net?

[leo9]

I was told right at the start "don't post anything online that you couldn't have mailed to your parents and your partner." But there are two obvious exceptions to that. One is that it wouldn't hurt me if my parents just said "Who is Leo9 and why should we care?" It is possible to keep your secrets in a separate compartment with no connections to your everyday identity, but it takes a whole lot more work than just clicking a box marked "Make my profile private": you have to have separate accounts that never contain anything that could identify you. Even then you could be backtracked through your host, but that involves the sort of effort used by law enforcement, or reporters on the trail of some really big story, not a casual troublemaker like the one in question.

And the other is that some of us are more exhibitionist than others . One of the reasons my ex-slave left was that she couldn't handle how open I was about my lifestyle. But I had to tighten up when one of the first conditions the Social Services demanded before they'd return my kid was that I stopped being indentifiable as a pervert online. Now he's too old for that to be a danger (and he'd probably think it was cool if I were outed to his peers as a bisexual slave-flogger,) I'm mostly restrained by not wanting to embarrass thir {HUG}.

[thir]

I'm mostly restrained by not wanting to embarrass thir {HUG}.

And I do appreciate it, thank you very much Sir!

And thank you for your answers, everybody.

[Thorne]

It is possible to keep your secrets in a separate compartment with no connections to your everyday identity, but it takes a whole lot more work than just clicking a box marked "Make my profile private":

Very true, and something I probably should have mentioned myself. Maintaining a nom de guerre (or a nom de réseau in this case) is a fairly simple way of staying private. Of course, posting identifying pictures of yourself, even using a pseudonym, is probably not a good idea, if privacy is your goal. And as you say, leo, even an alternate identity is not a guarantee. Just makes it harder for the casual pervert or family member to crack your identity.