These are actually Tim’s thoughts, but I agree with them too, so thought I’d share them here.
I think it is important to recognise that:
1) There are a lot of funny people out there.
2) Most people are mainly honest and decent.
3) There is much less reason to worry about web weirdos than about the bottle of bleach under your sink (for example).
4) In the real world thousands of children die each year in traffic accidents, domestic accidents etc – a tiny number are harmed as
a result of internet weirdos.
4) The high profile stories we see in the media are there only because they are good stories, not because they are things that we
should focus our concerns on.
5) I can think of no good reason for taking unnecessary risks.
6) There are a number of steps you can take to minimise your exposure to risk through your blog. These include: Excluding search
engine spiders from your blog. Not using an identifiable domain name (not your surname) and not naming members of your family on the
blog. Password protecting either the entire blog, or just particularly sensitive posts.
I’ll add that wordpress has some features that mean you can allow ppl graded access to the blog, so you could blog more privately to selected ppl if you felt so inclined.
Blogspot does not allow you to exclude search spiders – although you can list your blog as private. Not quite sure what this means search engine wise. You can’t do password protection there either.
Comments
16 responses to “Blog security”
They seeem like sensible thoughts. I like the idea of being able to prevent your blog being found on a search but as I’m just getting the hang of blogger, I think I’ll leave off swapping. Also I can’t find my blog on a search unless I’m spookily specific so… Also ‘set’ arrived- cheers Jax, have just explained it all to Pip and her eyes lit up!
Well, if i put the names of my 4 in, the first thing i get is a porn site :~D
tbh I’m still not 100% sure how to do the ‘graded access’ thing – other than moderating comments, or making comments only available to registered users, how can you actually make reading the page itself more limited? Am I missing something obvious?! Probably!
What’s the rationale behind not using real names? Is it to make you harder to track down in real life?
Another word of warning (the only one I heed usually!) is to be careful about mentioning your work in your blog. An employee of a well known chain of bookshops lost his job recently after being somewhat critical of his boss in his blog.
Hmm well I’ve fallen down on several of those then 🙂
Will contact you about the bits I would need help with if your’re willing!
You can give users levels – so everyone starts on as a default level 0 (or 1?), and then you can make a whole post only visible to e.g. level 3 users. So the level 0’s don’t even know they’re missing a post, which is quite nice. C has used it I know. Probably something to think about too. If I ever get to see C one evening, will try to sort womething out for mine!
Nic, I am always willing 🙂
“What’s the rationale behind not using real names?”
With a little knowledge and a little research it is possible to find out rather more than most people would feel comfortable with.
Alison – what I don’t know is how to make the post graded, iyswim?
It’s part of the plugin……you get to use the custom fields bit on the post page.
Aha – point me to the plugin? (and don’t tell me it doesn’t work with 1.5!)
It doesn’t!!!
But there is an alternative.
http://fortes.com/projects/wordpress/postlevels
The problem that needs some thought, and I can’t remember the workround I used, is that users with level 1 *can* post to a blog. So..you need to restrict that really.
lol, I dunno Sarah, it’s lucky C is here – I thought I was being impressive enough earlier 😉 I found my own template on the net and changed the colours, and my ‘need to know’ doesn’t go any further than that!
With your back, Tim 😉
Oooooh, yes!!!! 😉
Good luck today Jax 🙂