I think the farthest I’ll go is posting a picture of myself on a message board such as this one… I’ll reveal my gender, age, and city I live in, birthday, but that’s about it really. I don’t even post my photo’s on my Myspace page, or my real name, first or last… I just don’t like knowing that anyone can look me up via a simple website.
What about you folks? How concerned are you about sharing (real) personal information?
Very little. My wife and I were just commenting last night on how concerned we are about the apparent current trend by a lot of young people to post all sorts of personal information about themselves, their habits, their graphic stories and deepest thoughts online. Everyone from predators to prospective employers can and have used this against them.
Not much. I think I posted a pic here once.
I don’t have Facebook or My Space. Not because I think anyone would necessarily be interested or misuse the information but because I might decide one day I wish I hadn’t put the info out there but it’d be too late. So I never have.
I have Facebook, but it is very bland. I make sure there is nothing that can be taken as concrete evidence of anything. Here- nobody knows my name.
Pretty much actually. Nothing that could come back and haunt me, but I share personal anecdotes, what I do, what I want and soforth.
I’m not that worried about a prospective employer accidentally finding some party pics on Facebook, but I reccon I’d be able to explain them if it came to that.
Over the years I may have posted enough clues for a determined investigator to identify me, but I do try to be cautious.
I’ll never understand the appeal of Facebook and MySpace. I prefer actual (not virtual) human relationships. This board satisfies needs for intellectual interaction which I’m unable to fulfill in real life.
I don’t share my real name, the town I live in (though I’ll mention the state and will sometimes mention nearby towns), my birth date, or my picture. I did use my real name in the past but I’ve scrubbed most of those uses away. Now if you search for my name you will find a few things that my company posted (talks I’ve done), but you won’t find anything personal. I also don’t show up on any of those services that automatically generate profiles, like LinkedIn.
My wife is the opposite. She’s on Facebook, she uses her real name on all sorts of things, and she posts pictures of her, me, and the kids all the time. I only ask that a search on my name not return anything and she has obliged.
Very little. I have posted my pic very few times, and never along with my name. Some of my former classmates posted photos of our class reunion with me in them on Facebook, and labeled my pics. Those photos then showed up in my profile, even though I had chosen not to upload any. Good technology there, but no thanks.
I give out my address or credit card number very sparingly, I mainly deal with Amazon.com.
I post pictures and events from my life, but that’s about as far as it goes (though I may have been more open in the past). I subscribe to the idea that if I wouldn’t want my mom to see it, I won’t put it online. It’s stopped me from participating in pretty interesting discussions, because I’m just not comfortable revealing details about my sex life and interpersonal relationships.
Here, I’ll tell things about myself except for stories I’ve told in real life, so RL people that know me won’t be able to identify corkboard as me. No name, location, or pictures.
I have a Facebook page wtih pictures of me & my family, and our location.
Never the twain shall meet.
I’m willing to post quite a bit, but…
There’s nothing except for this message board that isn’t locked up. No one IRL knows my alternate identity is Anaamika. When I discovered the first thing that came up on search was my OKcupid account, and later, that people were linking to it and making rude comments about it (I was using it for quizzes - I never updated it!) I deleted it.
My LJ account and all of its entries are password protected and you have to friend me for you to see my stuff.
What else…? I have a facebook account, but there is one picture, from when I was 17, and I rarely update it.
I used to post a lot more personal stuff. Now I am just not interested. It helps, though, that a significant portion of my friends and family are really not very interested in the world of the Internet. Most of them can’t even understand why I put up a LJ, and when I try to explain it, I see the wall come up.
Oh, and nothing is linked to my real name. I have put up my real name on LJ, once, but you can’t find it without searching.
I hardly ever order online stuff, and usually let my So do that. No loss, I don’t like online shopping.
I will go ahead and mention the town I live in - Albany. 100K people, good luck finding me. I really believe with a little caution you can have fun online without people stalking you, etc. People do stupid things, generally, to get that sort of attention.
I regularly go online and search all of the various iterations of my name. My real name is VERY common in India; it’s like jenny, so I come up with thousands of people. Anaamika is also very common. My alternate identity which I use on LJ and e-mail - only marginally less common. Sometimes I’m glad I’m not that creative and didn’t pick a name like Qadgop the Mercotan which DOES stand out. (See Qad? No ‘u’!)
My mom is one of my best friends- I can’t really imagine the conversation we couldn’t have.
I will post pretty much anything. If you know me, then you know this stuff anyway. If you can’t deal with it, then I don’t want to know you or work for you.
Probably pretty easy to find me with the username, but only facebook or myspace will pop me up by my real name. Too many responses on other search engines.
A friend of mine, a lady with two grown daughters, asked me if I was on Facebook. I told her I was. She wanted me to look up her daughter’s profile, so I did, but of course I couldn’t see the full profile since I wasn’t her daughters “friend.” I remarked to my friend that she should just sign up for Facebook herself and then she could add her daughter to her friend list, and see her profile. She asked me how much it costs, and I told her “Nothing, it’s free.” She said “That’s not what my daughter told me, when I asked she said it costs each year!” So I guess her daughter didn’t want her on Facebook. 
It varies oddly.
I won’t give out my real name or location, but almost anything else goes. I try to restrain myself on certain topics for fear of y’all thinking I’m a freak (well, more than you already do). I’ve slipped on occassion with some of my LJ friends, but since they’re more daring than I am I guess it’s okay.
I’ll share personal stories but change the names of people involved to protect their privacy. I’d like to stay fairly anonymous so that I can speak frankly without worrying if I’m hurting someone’s feelings, etc.
I don’t have a Facebook and I think LJs run the risk of being undignified.
I won’t post anything that’s not readily available elsewhere; my website, the phonebook, etc. I make a point of posting as little as possible about my family, though.
I post a lot of information online, both because it’s therapeutic for me and hopefully gives hope to others who are going through similar things. I really like the idea of normalizing even the most dramatic of human experiences.
I do, however, have my limits. There are some things I don’t discuss, such as bodily functions, because it is embarrassing and gross and I am uptight. There are other things I don’t discuss because I doubt anyone would really understand, and I can’t really conceive of what anyone would get out of it, myself included.
I’m willing to post nude photos of myself, but not my last name or any information that would allow you to find me. My LiveJournal is written in symbols and code so that only the relevant people can understand it.
All of it, pretty much. People know more about me over the net than they do IRL (which isn’t entirely unusual) – much to their dismay, as certain members of this board can testify
How much personal information do you want? My phone number is on Facebook. My work address is on Myspace. AIM is on both, as is my e-mail. I buy things online, so my name and email are linked. If you look hard enough, you can find all kinds of things about me.