I journal a lot, but I also don't include the important stuff. Like I did a layout about my son and the journal card was information about his birth, full name, etc. For the web, I removed it all and left it blank because if you know my son's first and middle name, plus his birth date, it won't be that hard to find too much information about him and possibly his social security number.
In the beginning when I started scrapping I blurred my children's photos out, but that prevented me from getting on some fabulous creative teams. When the movie Coraline came out, I started putting buttons on my children's eyes. Then one day I got a nasty private message about how I was abusing my children by sewing buttons on their face.
So I got to thinking. I want to protect my identity, my children's identity and keep our family safe, especially with my husband being in the military. How do I do this? (1) I never post my photo as my avatar (2). I try very hard not to let people know my real name or current address. Just like here at SSD, in the store, my last name is Smith and my address---sorry Robyn, it's made up. But lately with paying in some stores, they are requiring my address match my paypal's address. I've been struggling with buying from said stores because I don't want too much information to get out there.
One thing that makes me nervous is social media. Right now I'm on several designers creative teams, but their teams are in Facebook Groups. While I understand it's easier to maintain FB Groups, sometimes I feel it sharing too much of my identity. Right now, I'll "friend" said designer, have them add me to their group, and then quickly "unfriend" them as I keep my friends list just to family and friends (mostly people I've met, grown up with, etc.) Social Media is kind of infringing on my privacy as I've tried for so many years to keep my identity safe.
If you were to google search my real name with my username, thank goodness (so far), you won't any photos of my children or layouts that I've created--all thanks to keeping the same username for the past 11+ years!
Keeping your family safe is totally something you should think about and always be aware if you are oversharing. I saw in one gallery, a birthday invite they had made with their mailing address and phone number! I was shocked, messaged her and she didn't realize what she had done was too much information.
Right now, your username isn't a legal name. If it were me and I were starting all over again, I'd keep it all under an alias without oversharing. Just make sure your kids are decent. No matter what you do to protect your family 100% of the time, there will always be that one person who can use a name to get their jollys. You can't keep everyone from doing something with your photos/layouts, but you can control what you post online.
|