Illusory Follies

Edit: This blog has grown! I have now added my associate, anonymously referred to as CoderGuy who will be adding posts related to identity, online security, and other privacy issues as well as technology in general. So, faithful readers, not all posts on this site are written by me! You should see the author at the bottom of each post. Hope you enjoy! And now, without further ado…

I am, by nature, a paranoid person; I lock my computer screen when I use the bathroom, in my own house! I have passwords on everything; mail, finances, personal directories, etc. I lock my car in my garage and when I get gas, I shred everything, even it it only has my name on it. OK, so maybe I am an extreme case (I am sure psychologists would have a field day with me), but that isn’t the purpose of this post. The thing is, I actually have no reason to be this way, I don’t do anything that I wouldn’t want anyone to know about, and am not in the witness protection program, I was just raised in an environment that personal things are personal, and if you want to keep them that way, you don’t invite others in.

I have been using the net almost since Al Gore created it (circa 1990) when you had to use comic book inspired apps in Windows 3.1 to get files and documents (remember Archie, Veronica, Jughead, and Gopher (Gopher? Where’s Betty!?)) and I spend way too much time surfing. I spend most of my time on news sites and technical sites, including technical related blogs. It wasn’t until recently that I started looking at some personal blogs and thinking about becoming a little more social.

I am finding that I am both intrigued and perplexed at the level of personal stuff I have seen on some blogs; pictures, names, details of honeymoons, information about family stuff I wouldn’t share with my own family, yet, people seem to be fine with this amount of information sharing. Being an ultra paranoid person as I am, all I can think of is while I read some of these posts is, “Are you crazy? Telling people that?”

Along my path of discovery, I have found that I am not completely paranoid, as I have seen stories of stalkers, people getting fired for their blog posts, people not getting hired because of their blog posts, even suicides and murders. So maybe a little paranoia is a good thing.

So my question is this; what is a good balance between too paranoid and too open? Are there others that feel as I do or do the majority of people think I am just way too cautious?

I am interested in getting some other opinions and comments.