Blogging, Privacy, and Trauma : Molested … [Sort of]

This is a three part post about my blogging experience so far. First part is here – Blogging, Privacy, and Trauma : Why I Blog.

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Around the fifth year of my online presence, I found out something that really shook my core. The photos on my blog were grabbed and edited maliciously!

 

Those photos were posted on my blog. I have willingly shared these photos because it is my way of updating my family back home (and where ever else they may be, we are a scattered bunch). I have never thought that someone would do something like this to me. I have not violated anything. I have not shamed anyone to deserve something like this. 

What brought this on, you ask? I used to moderate a forum before and some of the members did not like the way I have handled a certain “thread/topic”. 

I have always been careful of what I post. No addresses, no contact numbers, no work place info, No personal details like my mom’s name, name of my first pet, street I grew up in (all of these are used as security questions for banks, emails .. etc!) 

I never thought that posting my photos would also be harmful. It harmed MY soul big time. I was devastated and all I could do was talk to my friends about it. What else can I do? Wage war against these people? I did report the site where they did all of their “venting”. But the photos are there. And I know it happened. 

Because of this incident, it took me a while before I used my Facebook, Twitter and other social media accounts. I was scared to put anything out there anymore. When I finally decided to ditch Friendster and  use Facebook, I really took time to get to know the privacy settings. Everything is private from then on. Even my Twitter account was private for years! 

What are your privacy rules? Please do share!

Part 3 of this post: Blogging, Privacy, and Trauma : The Aftermath 

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PS. – I am not sharing this because I want to open old wounds or start anything with the people involved. We already talked, apologies were said and accepted. This is just a post based on my blogging experience.