Zara Rabinowicz writes...
The other day I was bored and browsing through Facebook. Y'know how it is, you look at your mates, you see who has updated their status/pictures/life and you flick through their profile trying to see if can catch them in any unflattering/hilarious poses. And then it happens. You notice the link to their website, you click once and then you're in. This happened the other night, and it went from harmless browsing to all out stalking. I browsed through this person's intimate thoughts, looked at her wedding pictures and basically ransacked her innermost being with no compunction and no guilt without even buying her dinner or flowers.
This website is live and open for anyone to read and I'm not 'anyone' as I know how her, so why do I now feel like I've done something dirty?
The next day I admitted I'd been 'stalking' her, and she was fine about it, but it got me thinking- when we post on the web do we want people we know to read it? How do you get away from the guilty feelings of personal space invasion? Am I just being overly sensitive and this is a non issue?
Talking to friends about this, one of them admitted that my feelings weren't uncommon. She revealed that she'd randomly Googled a friend's name and been shocked to find out they had a whole other life separate to what she knew. This person belonged in a band, had medical health issues and family problems, and none of this had she discovered by talking to them. Yet all of a sudden she was possessed with this insider knowledge, and what should she do? Tell them and have them think she's crazy stalker lady? Or continue as she is, bottling up her new-found knowledge?
But why is there a problem here? Surely when people post online they hope/expect their stuff to be read in the vast world of cyberspace, so why should it be weird when you do? Perhaps it's cos when they write their personal thoughts down for approval/criticism they expect people they DON'T KNOW to view it, rather than their friends.
It reminds me of the time one friend was flooded with 'are you OK?' messages when her status turned into 'not in a relationship' on Facebook. She'd simply removed the option from her profile, but we all thought she'd split up with the man in question. Last week my boss revealed that when I'd applied for my job she'd checked me out on MySpace, and seen my awful angsty student photos and terribly moronic personal blog (probably why I got the job on my 2nd application). The profile is now firmly set to private, but it left me with a weirdly icky feeling. It seems so normal to read strangers' sites, so why is it trickier when you know them?
Personal blogs differ from mainstream blogs in that they address personal issues, from love and sex to parental strife, and are a way of vocalizing inner thoughts in diary form. Yes, they're read by many people, but so are Dear Deirdre letters. Should the option be then to privatize your site, making it impossible to tell who the author is? That would somehow detract from the cutesy photos of pets/husbands/drunk shenanigans.
I guess there is no real solution, and if you ever read someone's blog and start thinking, 'Woah! Better stop, this is getting to personal', that's your call, but I'm betting every-time you get that 'Woah!' feeling it will just make you more curious. So, live with the guilt or own up to it? Hey, you haven't done anything wrong! That'll teach people to reveal their private life on the web ;.)
Zara Rabinowicz writes for Shiny Shiny,The Baglady and Kiss and Makeup and is Googling you now. She doesn't know if she should feel guilty or not.
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It's certainly an interesting line. I don't think googling friends is very stalkery, but it can be. I once searched for a friend of mine and found out some... interesting stuff. It wasn't anything terrible, but I did feel like it was almost an invasion of privacy simply because of the things I found.
Now, Spokeo on the other hand, is a webservice that appears to be far more stalker-like than simply searching for a person and seeing what you find. Granted, it spams your friends inboxes in addition to scouring websites for said friends email address(es)
Your story creeped me out just a bit. Enough to make me at least consider deleting my blog. So please do not visit my blog - the one I post to for other people (even perfect strangers) to read, and whose URL I've listed here.
But the bottom line is that your story is a great precautionary tale; one which should be taken into account by anyone when posting anything remotely personal anywhere online.
Anything online is fair game. If the friend was sensitive about who was looking at her website, she could have employed a number of simply implemented strategies to prevent it.1)Only use a screen name online for personal stuff so there is nothing to link to, 2) Don't put a link to your website on Facebook (and it seems she was not careful about who was reading her personal stuff on Facebook anyway, so what the hell), 3)Put a approved-visitors only/by invite only entry requirement for her webpage or blog (Blogger has one). There are so many ways to use the Internet yet retain privacy and they are not terribly difficult. I have trouble believing that anyone still expects privacy online. It's incredibly naive.
I concur, any thing you do or say on line can be accessed regardless, even the “privacy” settings on some social net working sites can, (and probably have) been compromised. The one saving grace is the fact someone has to want to find this information, most of us in the boring grey mass of humanity are not that interesting, in the end it’s the internet that has for good or ill that has brought the world together not that stops human nature, lets face it , the nets designed for voyeurism, we all like to watch, pry and sniff around, at least this articles reporter informed on herself to her “stalking victim” I wonder if a good many of the rest of us would ever consider that option?,
When people post anything anywhere, there is the automatic invitation to others to gawk and stalk. Unless they're clueless about the web and its uses, they realize that whatever's out there is fair game for all of our prying eyeballs.
Whether or not people want their friends/network to read/see their 'whatever' is another question. I myself don't feel too guilty when checking out people's info. Maybe I reason, almost subconsciously at this point, that because they've made it public, it's not as if I'm forcefully prying. Hmm...
As for where we, as 'content publishers' can take steps to privatize our daily doings/thoughts...that's tricky because the point of so many sites is about sharing information. At least with Facebook you can control a little more of what people see.