Earlier, we touched upon the risks and rewards of publicly "owning" your site. As you develop a blog – and perhaps even a blogger persona – consider the cumulative effect of all those small details. "A good rule of thumb: if you wouldn't share the info on your blog with a strange guy on a dark street, don't post it for the public," advises the Internet Safety Expert Linda Criddle, author of Look Both Ways. "Think of each piece of information as a drop of water in a bucket. In the past, there was no bucket to store the information and though information was shared, it vanished from memory quickly. Online, however, it collects one drop at a time in a place where it can be recalled and you become more discoverable as the bucket fills." "Talk to your family and friends about the kinds of information you’re willing make public and what you’d rather keep private.
Everyone you interact with online needs to respect your safety boundaries, and you need to respect theirs. Posting information about others is not okay—in comments, photos, and so on—unless they agree to share that information. And not only should you ask permission, but you should also make it clear who can see your site. In the case of minors, you might need to get their parents’ permission as well."
The consequences can be far-reaching, as Heather B. Armstrong can attest. Her site's name inspired a new word, "dooced," meaning to be sacked for indiscreet web chatter. And some bloggers don't even make it to the employment starting blocks, it emerges. A 2008 Career Builder survey reveals that one-in-five employers use blogs and social networking sites to do research on their job applicants. One-third of those hiring managers have found content that caused them to dismiss the candidates from consideration. The two top areas of concern: info about drinking or illegal drugs, and provocative or inappropriate photographs. Poor communication skills followed. So spellcheck, spellcheck, spellcheck! Here's a quickie solution to block Google from archiving your blog. Insert this code into the
<head>of your blog:
<META NAME="GOOGLEBOT" CONTENT="NOARCHIVE">
If you'd like to block other search engines from saving your pages try this one:
<META HTTP-EQUIV="PRAGMA" CONTENT="NO-CACHE">
To stop it from indexing your blog altogether, insert this code as well:
<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="noindex,nofollow">
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