On Sunday I sat on this computer ((well, I sat on my chair, NEXT to the computer and INFRONT of the monitor and keyboard)) and deleted a bunch of my accounts and made all the other sites I’m still a member at (vox) personal.
I don’t mind people I know offline finding me online (my ex-boyfriend, offline friends), no, if offliners ask me for my site ((me:”oh, I love coding and working with Photoshop” person:”Do you have a website?” me:”Ehrm, I guess”)) they’re quite impressed. None of my friends code, none of my friends work as much with Photoshop (well, some).
A couple of months ago I received two emails at my @schatzi.me account. The two emails came from the company which support my current diploma thesis with satellite data.
The emails were great, the employees writing me offered help, said I shouldn’t hesitate to email them when I have questions. They said “we found you through google’s automated text search” ((I have not linked the site, I only wrote the name of the satellite in my about section)).
On one side I was glad they found my page, on the other side I was worried. I was sitting at work, hardly concentrating on my thesis, just thinking “Oh gawd, I hope my about page doesn’t say something like My favorite sexual position is this and that and I really love getting laid in the morning “. I couldn’t wait to get home and check.
On Sunday, as noted above, I deleted accounts like Twitter (never used it), removed a bunch of photos, made my accounts private, updated this site (also new picture on the top, me from behind, not very personal, but most of you know how I look anyways 🙂 )
I’ve done that because I’ll be looking for a job this fall and I can imagine CEO’s of a company like to open IE, FF, Opera… , go to google.com and just search for the person applying. If you search for “Tracy” on the Germany google you’ll find my page as #6 on the first page (yay) 
So well, I’m not fake, it’s me, my real name, my real interests, I’m just not as personal as I used to be (and with that I mean I won’t tell you anymore stories about how bloody my tampon was today (did I ever?), how many orgasms I had yesterday night, and no, I won’t post anymore naked pictures of myself 😛 (again, did I ever?) )
How personal are you on your website?
Where can I get cute smilies?
Re the smilies: steal Jem’s. 😛
Like you, I deleted a lot of the random accounts I had lying around. Those that I haven’t deleted I’ve privatised. It’s nice to control what exactly people do and do not know about yourself; some of it I don’t mind now but I wouldn’t want to regret it when employed, say, five years ahead.
That is surely very scary to have potential employers checking you out through the Internet. I hope they don’t do that to me. I have too many private things lying around on the net that I probably have forgotten about.
I’m amazed that something like this has happened. Imagine if your site was something else. That’s why I use an alias, and do not use your first or last name, or put your domain email on your resume. Those are always costly and can become a conflict. ^_^ Glad it wasn’t bad or anything though!!
I know what you mean about people you know finding your website unexpectedly. That’s happened to me a few times too, although thankfully it’s never been too much of a disaster, because I’m a rather boring,normal person, and don’t discuss anything on my site that i wouldn’t be willing to discuss with someone I knew personally too, should they ever ask.
You are number 4 when I search you on my google 🙂 you must be popular
I was once found by a not so sympathetic coworker who gave the domain to other coworkers. I totally panicked and took my site off the net for several months, then later on created a log in page for my blog, after I got rid of that people could only read my blog entries from the last 15 days, and stuff like that. It took a long time for me to make my blog all public again, I learned my lesson the hard way. I still exclude search engines from my blog, but it can be found by searching for my nickname because so many people on the net link to it with my nickname.
I still don’t link my blog from anywhere else on the net except other blogs, and I hardly “interlink” all my different profiles on the net.
I try not to write anything too personal or incriminating on my blog anymore either (I did enough of that when I was younger!). That’s why I use to write a lot of private and controversial topics too, but not anymore. I think the one thing you should never do is use your full name (first, last) on the internet!! I use to have my domain address up on Facebook and I was part of my company’s network too so a lot of them might’ve accidently stumbled onto my blog which I soo do not want! I don’t write anything bad about my job because I do love it but still… lol.
I should prolly delete some stuff where I’ve been as well. I can’t remember all of them though. xD
This worries me as well because with archive.org, it’s not just current sites they can find but old ones as well. I’ve been contemplating going completely anonymous but I’m not sure if I want to yet. I don’t say anything really personal on my sites already but I hate to think that I might not get a job because of an article I posted on my site about something (i.e. having an opinion. I’ve already made the WHOIS information for my domains private as one step in doing this. However, if you search for Jamie on google, my site does show up somewhere. On the AOL search it was on page 1, the 6th one down at one time.
I’d have the same concerns if anyone from my university / potenteial grad school /potential employer found my website or any profile lying around!
Right now I don’t think I have anything too compromising (except maybe overexposing my hatred for most things ;D) but I do have some abandonned profiles that I’m off to delete soon. Once I created a Netlog profile (crappy, crappy site) and I’m bombarded with nasty horny messages and comments. That’s the first one to go!
Only my family and close friend call me “lene”, because that how my name sounds when you say it fast and too much, but with little effort my site could lead someone to my full name 😛
Anyway, as a general rule I try not to write anything that would adversly affect my reputation in front of anyone from “real life” – except maybe all those pictures I draw making fun of my parents, hehe.
But oh well. What will we do without your blogs about sex in the morning and bloody tampons? I think I’ll just hang myself now 🙁
PS: I think this post accounts for more compromising information than everything else in your blog altogether, lol!
I’m actually worried about this, too, when I start applying for jobs and future employers do background checks.
Hm, I don’t think anyone offline knows about my site. I’m not sure I would want anyone to know either.
As for the smilies, I have no idea. I don’t really like to use them.
I’m hardly as personal as I used to be and still have grand goals of sweeping up all the more detailed entries in my archives and weeding them out. 😛 I definitely get your concern though, especially with interviewing for jobs. These days one of the first things employers seem to do is Google an applicant’s name! Pretty smart move though, to find out what someone is really like.
As for smilies, I just installed these:
http://aneesah.pixelled.com/?page_id=13
They are soooo cute! 😀