Never underestimate Big Brother’s reach.

I was struck today by how difficult (but not impossible) it can be to track a blogger down for email contact. In two cases recently, I’ve tried to track down people for whom I knew the locations of their blogs, but I did not know their emails. It turned into a challenge to try and track them down, as public posting was either inappropriate or I feared it would be missed.

At first, I was a touch annoyed at not having a contact form or something with which to send them personalized messages. After I started really digging, though, I found it kinda… fun.

I found myself intrigued by the challenge of trying to search for little tidbits of information, some snippet of context on which to build more information.  I’ve searched for other blogs, for employer information, etc.  A lot can be extrapolated with in-depth reading of content.  Domain-name owner for a website, interests posted (e.g., blogging categories or links), writing style, etc.  All of these can help build a picture of who someone is, what they do, and where they live.

One’s first thought might be to try to hide everything while online, so that no one can ever track you down.  Take the paranoid approach, and try to hide.  Probably not bad, but it only makes it a bit more difficult.  What with internet search engines caching and archiving everything, if one even slips up once it’s available in a (moderately) easy-to-find method.

I tend to display most stuff online, and not hide much.  It will probably come back to bite me, but so far, it’s not been bad.  (Yeah, yeah… famous last words!)

Anyway - those two bloggers I mentioned?  I’m pretty sure I found contact emails for them.  Let’s hope I hear back soon.

-sean

Thursday, May 17th, 2007 @ 12:59 pm Code Life Lessons
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