musings on privacy
I'm trying to write my Neocities about page and am definitely overthinking it, but for someone so navel-gazey, I'm finding it surprisingly hard!
As a child of the internet, I was always told not to reveal personal information online. Of course I toed the line quite a bit, but these days I'm taking more measures to reinstate that wall between public and private that I mostly ignored when I was a pre-teen/teenager.
I worry now that I've gone too far in the other direction though - I'm hesitant to post things like what I do for work or what my ethnic background is or who composes my family (not even names! just how many brothers and sisters, shit like that). I don't know where the line now is between "details that will be easily traced to me if you cobble all of them together in a conspiracy theory pinboard" and "it's fine, no one is going to come to your home and laser-cut your window and take you away."1 Obviously no one cares that much, but my anxiety brain doesn't see that.
It's wild to me that a lot of these old webpages of Ye Olde 90s had a lot of those details. I get it - it was a different time with less data tracking, and you were mostly safe. I'm just not sure if it can be replicated on the new old web with the same safety guaranteed. Maybe I'm just being paranoid.
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A real nightmare I had as a kid who almost stepped into a dangerous situation online (but had the presence of mind to duck out of). [EDIT 03/20/2023: Not related to my pen pal.]↩