Safety Tips for New Bloggers

So you want to start a blog? Go ahead!  It’s easy to set one up at any of the free blogging services like Blogger or Wordpress. Choose a template. Fill out the required information. But then you have to make an important decision: do use your real name or remain anonymous?

I started blogging in the early days of the medium and the first round of blogs I came across in my city were all written anonymously. So that’s what I did because it seemed standard. Now, more and more people (myself included) write blogs under their real names. But there are still some reasons why you might want to remain behind the curtain. Perhaps you don’t want your employer to think you’re blogging on company time. Maybe you want to rant about your friends and family without having them to see your unfiltered thoughts. Or maybe you’re going to write an intimate blog and you simply feel more free to express yourself by remaining anonymous.

In those cases, you need to stay anonymous – especially if you are a woman. If you decide to write a blog that gives lurid details about your dating and love life, you need to take extra precautions regarding your profile and your day-to-day content. Writing posts of a sexual nature is bound to attract some Internet predators and you really need to protect your identity. And don’t think that it’s safe to write under just your first name. Instead, make up a name or choose one that isn’t even closely related to your own. Don’t give any indication about where you live. If you’re telling a story about going on a date at a certain restaurant, just say “a sushi place near downtown.” And obviously, don’t give any personal information in your profile.

As you carry on, you will start to get commenters as the goal of any blogger is to generate dialog about your blog topics. You may banter back and forth with some of them. Make sure that you set up a completely separate email address where commenters can send their email. This will help keep your real life and virtual identities separate and safe from those who are resourceful. Believe it or not, there are people who spend hours each day seeking out prey and know some extremely creative ways to find out who you are.