Monday, May 4, 2009
Privatize your blog?
Recently I met with a bride to be who works with the boys and girls club as an internet safety adviser. I asked her about making your blog private and she had some interesting information to share. She said that she has 5 blogs and none of them are private. What she suggested is instead of making your blog private is that you actually remove from your settings the option where it says "Let search engines find your blog?" selecting "no" on this option stops sites like google and yahoo from searching your site and making your blog and personal info searchable on their sites and easy to find for anyone. Which is where most who have no business seeing your blog would find it. Try copying and pasting a line from a recent post into a google search engine and see if it pulls you up - try it even if you have a privatized blog - anything familiar come up? One other piece of info she shared was that most hackers are drawn to private blogs, because when access is limited they believe there is even more personal information that may be found. Either way - private or not - if you have a family blog and have not made your blog private - it seems to be a good idea to at least make your site not searchable. Thoughts?
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5 comments:
I've had "no" selected on the search engine from the very beginning but still had some freak I didn't know making rude comments. I went private and haven't heard from the person since. I figure being private won't block the people who REALLY want to get in but still makes me feel safer.
It would be a good idea to moderate your comments if that is going on. You can select that option in your preferences too. In most cases that I've heard of, where offensive comments are being left, the person leaving the comment is someone that they know. And moderating the comments would take care of both scenarios.
My blog wasn't searchable but I had people from all over the world looking at my blog. Even Africa, it just seemed kind of creepy to have people I don't know looking at my personal life. That's why we went private.
Mine is open to anyone to read. I have it set so that it does not pull from a search engine. Right now I am ok with those settings. I can change it if I decide to latter. I can delete or moderate comments if I need to.
For something of the nature of a business then you want it to pull from a search engine. Like your photo one for instance. Don't list your private blog on the blogroll.
I love that I read this because I don't want to make mine private. So much work and if people I know find me on a friend's site - I want them to be able to see! But then again maybe that's bad. Oh well. I don't know. Let me know if you do decide to go private!
P.S. Mama IS the sweetest sound in the word until they start yelling it because you're not doing something right. But I'm sure yours will never do that. :)
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