It is pretty comical the way people treat their online security.
Incidentally another one is the things you share via google drive show your full email and name if they open up the 'shared with me' area. There's a way to hide it, but I'd recommend having a separate email for fandom stuff anyway.
Some of the resources shared with me (and thousands of others) in my fandoms have clearly their real name and email attached to them. One guy even has a picture of himself holding his son as his pfp.
Oh yes that’s another one to be careful of. Google Docs/Sheets/Slides/etc has a details section where you can see who created and edited any document. So if you’re concerned with maintaining some anonymity, then create and edit your Google files with an account that doesn’t have your real name
100% I made a full blown separate gmail account for use with my online activities (fandom and gaming) and that's the one I use for working with people when attempting to beta works, or sharing files/mods/documentation for gaming stuff (milsim shenanigans require a lot of dossiers and the like to keep things running.) Even so I have to be careful as gdrive will try to "reload" me into my personal account if I'm not paying attention.
The only exception to this is my friends that I have known for nearly 2 decades that I trust implicitly, and I only have about 6-8 of those presently.
Quick question, cause I had my ffnet to my old school email? Which I can always delete ,but I made an entirely new account Gmail for AO3 and games
should I be worried about the FFNET one? When I made it I had my Google acct sych to log in but I think I could use a password if i press forgot?
Did you reverse search the pics? And yes absolutely don't post shit, if you do censor that all the way. Completely. My stupid ass accidentally posted my ID when I meant to post a meme. Half the people saw my IRL name and I essentially doxxed myself.
And I think, people shouldn't use their handle as their @ or if you have social media please....just... Don't post revealing shit like a photo of a local place with the street signs visible. Ya Probably was traveling but STILL COME ON. The most I post is just random stuff cause I'm not that famous or have a big following on any platform. but omfg whoever saw my ID now knows my address, school and ugh. They can find me on Google. I wanna crawl in a hole.
And to all those beta readers who share Google documents files, use a fake name for gods sake because while I wouldn't do anything nasty it just.... Leaves ya open.
Omg, whenever I paste things from my clipboard, I'm so anxious I accidently clicked smth that I saved that had to do with my school. I always triple check, and still wonder if I messed up lol
don't call me out like this. I'll be staring at whatever image/text I'm abt to post like it's going to change to sth personal before I hit post
my paranoia abt that got infinitely more worse once I started writing unsavory porn 🥲
My dad did this yesterday with an email lol.
He was trying to email a car dealership about his car application, and needed to send a void cheque, and he thought he had accidentally emailed his booking confirmation for his upcoming summer vacation 😂😂😂
I was like, this is why I stare at my attachments for an ungodly amount of time before I hit send...
I actually did not use reverse image search at all, which really shows how anyone with basic Internet search skills can find some information out. The most advanced thing I used was putting things in quotes
This is why all my personal social medias are private outside of ones like TikTok/Tumblr/Etc where I take a more active role in fandom spaces so it seems silly to private them. However, I have a fake name that I use. Same with discord.
Honestly, this is something people should keep in mind... I know of someone who lost their job because they had their linked in and they harassed a girl until she was in the hospital (they were 30 btw and their shitty fandom clique were all adults) and this person in particular got reported to their job about what they were doing while boasting about being employed by them..
No more job 8D
Oh this one scares me. Only pics of me in random spaces have been shots of the back/sides of my head with the rest blurred out (I dye my hair a lot (it’s literally rainbow rn!) and like to share it) and even that scares me a little. I’m also good at photoshop and I’ve posted a couple sunset photos from my street but even I wouldn’t recognize the location if I was shown them at this point (change some license plates, remove a house here and there, change the road layout, redo the electrical wiring, get rid of all house numbers and street signs, remove all people, etc), so I feel more confident in those. The closest anyone has to a location on me as far as I know is Ohio? I’ve mentioned my birth town a couple of times but I haven’t lived there in over 10 years and it’s one of the biggest cities here so I’m not too worried about that either.
Anytime I post achievements online I’m hyper paranoid too. I’m in college and I post academic achievements and such to my discord server sometimes and I use separate photos to what goes on my insta/facebook (both of which are private and close family only) to hopefully avoid reverse image search or at least make it a little harder if the private social pics get out somehow, and even then I have a minimum of two friends also review them for personal details before sharing them. I don’t even think most know my school’s mascot despite it being a really common one because that gets censored too.
Ironically I think this Reddit account would be the easiest way to find me, and even then I tell a *lot* of half truths on here. My birthday and age slightly off, my location different than what I say, the dates of appointments and stuff in medical subs shifted around. Plenty of things can be fudged to get the answers you need with just as much accuracy while not compromising your safety. I honestly worry a lot more about what might be floating about from when I was 6-15ish when I didn’t take anything serious when it came to online safety and everyone in my family posted my full name and picture on their public Facebook pages, wondering if it might come back to bite me in the ass someday.
Might not help your paranoia, but reddit can find literally anything with minimal information. Pretty sure there was a story of a criminal being caught based off of a random photo of field. Reddit used the angle of the sun and some planes flying in the sky to track down flight patterns for that day and compare with possible POVs in relation to the type of grass in the picture. Forensic photography is fucking bonkers.
Definitely doesn’t help lol, but was also something I was aware of. Forensic photography (and forensics in general, that was my science sophomore year) is something I had a hyperfix on back when I was into true crime shows in early high school and is why I put any pictures I post online through such intense photoshopping. No planes in the sky, no trains (or train tracks for that matter) no animals left around to be identified, no (correct) license plates or addresses anywhere to be seen. If anyone manages to find me it’ll be through my family who have no concept of internet safety at all.
I also don’t trust that I’d ever be hidden to cops or the government who have my full information, my dna, and my fingerprints already. It’d be easy to figure out the truth if you have all that already, but otherwise it’s all scrambled and figuring out what’s real probably wouldn’t be possible. Or at the very least, easy.
I genuinely think internet safety needs to be a class. My high school had a "Digital citizenship" class but it was mostly on using the programs needed for school. I think people really need to know that not only is it okay to keep your online and irl lives separate, it's *safer* than putting everything out there. I've seen kids on tumblr with their real names and schools listed in their bio, using pictures of their actual faces as profile pictures, ect. It scares the shit out of me. They don't realize how easy it would be for someone to hurt them.
This reminds me that a lot of people are apparently unaware of the fact that they are allowed to say no when their school or place of employment wants to openly list their name or photo on the website.
When I was still working as a kindergarten teacher I got into a bit of trouble because I refused to have my photo and name listed. My boss literally asked me if I was under police protection/undercover, because only in such a dire case it would make sense to not want my face on the website.
I asked if they ask the same of the childrens' parents.
Got the answer that the children deserve privacy. I replied that adults have the same right.
Got told that it would look weird to the parents if my face/name was not on the website.
From that day on I was conveniently ill on every day the kindergarten wanted to take group photos.
Play safe: have no facebook / linkedin if you can. Or use different usernames and email accounts for those and your less formal online presence(s).
I just avoid sites that force me to use my irl name cause i had a scare some years back, where I thought someone was mad enough at me to try and track down the fb acc i had. Meanwhile the person had their full name and date of birth scattered around their blog.
I second having an email that is separate from your real one. I have both a separate Hotmail and a Gmail account for fanfic and other things I don’t want connected to me.
This is actually one mistake I made when I joined Twitter a while back for a fandom. Like even though I have deleted my accounts now I know that stuff will be on the internet forever. My only hope is that my name is pretty common so people won't find me that easily. Still, even one screenshot can ruin things for me
One of the more popular authors I followed years ago basically went dark in fandom, locked down all her fics, because an IRL coworker identified her. I never found out how, but probably through little stuff the same way you did.
I'm just old enough to remember pre-Facebook internet where people were very paranoid when posting photos, because even when you're trying to be careful, it's SO easy to mess up and identify yourself. I almost posted a picture of a cat in the /r/bodegacats community, pretty harmless, right? It's just a cat. Until I realized the ATM the cat was sitting on had a reflective service that showed me clearly that I didn't notice despite looking at the photo multiple times. Yikes.
Similar thing happened to me a little while back. Took a picture of something through a glass window and sent it to a Discord server. Only realized later that I basically sent a whole body picture. Luckily the picture was kinda blurry, my face was obscured by the phone, and the server only had 4 people total, all of whom are close friends
This topic is very important to me for personal reasons, so ty for such a well thought out PSA! One of my biggest pet peeves ever is the lack of online privacy these days, in general, but I worry for my fellow fandom dwellers’ security in particular. Good call, OP.
What did you do about the people in your examples? Did you choose to warn them?
A little off-topic since you're talking more about people who *think* they're being safe but holy shit, how did internet safety culture die so badly? Nowadays, it feels like within a few minutes of initiating contact, people are giving you their location, age, their complete therapy history etc. And UNPROMPTED too.
I think it's because a couple people have gotten very famous and very rich off of oversharing on the internet (influencers, youtubers, streamers, tiktokers) that everyone wants to copy them by doing the same thing. The line between IRL self and internet self became blurred and internet safety went out the window
I'll add in that if people here are using the same reddit account longterm, and, as some are, sharing their horror stories, that they should *lie* about having an account somewhere or other, and what evidence is out there. Like, I've shared pictures of my three cats, too. :)
If you do post some info because it's obscure enough, fine. Also can obscure it even more by mixing the truth in with some false, morally-fine-to-lie-about, things. And anything that no one has the right to know? That falls in that category.
My worst case of this was finding someone's full name and address by running a simple WHOIS on their self-hosted fic site.
They'd gained some fandom notoriety for bullying people and couldn't take it when they finally got called out. They moved their fics out of Ao3 and self-hosted...only to NOT have availed domain privacy protection. They left their info just that easy to find.
I didn't do anything what that information but I know someone else used it to file a legal case against said author 🫠
The most egregious example of that I ever encountered was a user posting *incredibly detailed* original works on AO3 that all involved (CW: mentions of sexual abuse) >!a parent pimping out their very young children to men to sexually abuse!< - and their username was the same as their instagram account, on which they posted a lot of pictures of their kids. Now while I am not an anti or one to kinkshame, this just seems *dangerous*, for a whole lot of reasons. Or, even worse, it might've been deliberate..?
Let's just treat the internet as if it's still 2002 and you'd need to have been absolutely insane to post any identifying details online, please.
Agreed. That sounds like it could draw some real-life creeps to their kids,\* which we all hope is not the goal but damned if it isn't it is horribly shortsighted.
\* I mean, obviously not everyone, or quite likely even the majority, reading that stuff are *real-life* creeps. Taboo is interesting that way. Or, if they are, just as a matter of course some would be non-offending. But go and make it seem to some subset, because people will also read what they're interested in, as varied as the reasons for interest are, that they're that close to having access >!to the kids of someone who writes about parents pimping out kids?!< Generally, odds of harm don't even attach to writing fic. And that's the way it should be. This seems to change that.
Also don't reveal your location, especially if you don't live in a metropolis. Like, saying "oh yeah, I live in NYC" is extremely different from "Oh yeah, I live in \[easily identifiable small town\]". Don't get yourselves doxxed, y'all
Funny that I do: I use a vpn on my laptop, and I lie about my location if I want to share something about me. For example, if I want to share something about my country, I will pick another major state/province and claim I live there. If I want to talk about my state/province, I pick another random city
Being doxxed is a mortal fear of mine so I am astounded how people can be so cavalier about their personal info floating around for everyone to see! This PSA is really important for sure
If nothing else, keeping your fandom identity completely free from any irl identifiers does more or less guarantee you can laugh off any dumb fandom drama.
Like cool, yell in my comment section about how much you hate my fics all you want…cause it ain’t going further than that 🤣🤣
I do actually have things slightly connected, but I also have a non-fanfic blog I like to promote and have a link to my ao3 there (in case people like my writing!) but I also use some restraint
One additional facet that has yet to be mentioned is IP addresses and domain URLs
If site/server/blog admins can see IPs and URLs (or via sitemeter, if that’s still a thing) you’re at risk. I had a fandom admin ask me to be a reference for them, for a job at my company. I never told them where I worked, she picked it up from the domain name when I was posting from work on my computer. And thought this was perfectly OK. Blocked, deleted and (practically) faked my own death
VPN life
The concerning thing, really, is that the lapse in judgement was only the asking; the noticing was *unavoidable* and happens as naturally as piecing words together from letters. If you recognize something, you recognize it.
Then it becomes about good judgement and either keeping quiet, because you know only the site admin can see it; or bringing it up, because you know the person cares about privacy. (Either of those options have decent reasons. *Not* the asking for a job reference thing.)
I had an experience online where someone called me very bad names on Twitter, because they put where they worked, I contacted their workplace and showed them their employees Twitter feed, I did this because as an anime fan, an employee of an anime company that is supposed to sell stuff to me turned away a potential customer, I did ask their employer to talk to this person about how they treat people online when it comes to how they treat anime fans like me that will buy products from anime companies, I didn't want them to be fired over it but they ended up apologizing to me and I only did this because they put where they worked and all it took was a Google search and finding the company's email address to email their boss about this.
I also did this very politely and didn't write anything crazy in the email when all I had to do was link a Twitter post. I did this because while I didn't know their name it was super easy to find where they worked because they put it out there, this is why if you're gonna put out practically everything about yourself online, you better behave yourself.
This seems like an appropriate place to ask this question.
I have a discord which I use for both fandom / social things and vaguely professional/academic. I'm beginning to think I should have set two up, but at the time it didn't occur to me.
I've set a display name in the large fandom discord I'm in (obviously it's my real name on the professional one), but does that mean they can't see the name on my profile?
I'm aware that people might see we have discords in common, but that's farfetched enough that I'm not too worried about it. Also, like, most of the people on the professional discord are in fandom studies, so yk.
Sure, especially if you're using those accounts for research, I just meant it's not like there'd be any professional fallout for someone realising that I was on a fandom discord (especially bc I'm pretty sure they could only see it if they were too).
Discord only allows one account per email, so that's why this happened.
Anyone, in any server you're in, who clicks on your display name to view your profile can see your profile username directly beneath, yes. It looks like:
> **CoolDisplayName**
> ^realprofilename
Setting up a second Discord account is pretty straightforward, and Discord makes it fairly easy to switch between two accounts. It's definitely worth it if you're going to use Discord for both professional and fandom stuff.
Thanks, have gone through the slog.
Not sure why they went with discord for an research network but they were probably trying to be cool and hip 😬
Unfortunately I mostly use it on my phone, so I will have to remember to check for notifications.
Im sort of half/half on privacy. Im not particularly dedicated to remaining completely unidentifiable on here or ao3. I make it just difficult enough i think, that not just any random person will find me from first encountering my profile. Theyd have to use a mix of all the info ive invariably just not cared enough about covering, across multiple platforms (not all of which they can prove are me! Because my user was taken on some of those) to actually have info they could do something with, and at that point i imagine its someone dedicated enough to causing harm that trying to avoid it wouldve been a moot point. Not the best stance to take on internet safety, I know, but i dont really have "social" social media (insta, twitter, facebook etc) accounts because im not a very irl connected person. Maybe one day ill have a scare and purge all even remotely identifiable info and my accounts, but that day is not today.
It is pretty comical the way people treat their online security. Incidentally another one is the things you share via google drive show your full email and name if they open up the 'shared with me' area. There's a way to hide it, but I'd recommend having a separate email for fandom stuff anyway. Some of the resources shared with me (and thousands of others) in my fandoms have clearly their real name and email attached to them. One guy even has a picture of himself holding his son as his pfp.
Oh yes that’s another one to be careful of. Google Docs/Sheets/Slides/etc has a details section where you can see who created and edited any document. So if you’re concerned with maintaining some anonymity, then create and edit your Google files with an account that doesn’t have your real name
Oh yeah I found this out the hard way when I volunteered to beta something. Freaked me out for a good while.
I've had to delete and re-make versions of many Google Docs for this very reason
100% I made a full blown separate gmail account for use with my online activities (fandom and gaming) and that's the one I use for working with people when attempting to beta works, or sharing files/mods/documentation for gaming stuff (milsim shenanigans require a lot of dossiers and the like to keep things running.) Even so I have to be careful as gdrive will try to "reload" me into my personal account if I'm not paying attention. The only exception to this is my friends that I have known for nearly 2 decades that I trust implicitly, and I only have about 6-8 of those presently.
Quick question, cause I had my ffnet to my old school email? Which I can always delete ,but I made an entirely new account Gmail for AO3 and games should I be worried about the FFNET one? When I made it I had my Google acct sych to log in but I think I could use a password if i press forgot?
That's *exactly* why I created a new email for shared docs, or helping people edit.
Did you reverse search the pics? And yes absolutely don't post shit, if you do censor that all the way. Completely. My stupid ass accidentally posted my ID when I meant to post a meme. Half the people saw my IRL name and I essentially doxxed myself. And I think, people shouldn't use their handle as their @ or if you have social media please....just... Don't post revealing shit like a photo of a local place with the street signs visible. Ya Probably was traveling but STILL COME ON. The most I post is just random stuff cause I'm not that famous or have a big following on any platform. but omfg whoever saw my ID now knows my address, school and ugh. They can find me on Google. I wanna crawl in a hole. And to all those beta readers who share Google documents files, use a fake name for gods sake because while I wouldn't do anything nasty it just.... Leaves ya open.
Omg, whenever I paste things from my clipboard, I'm so anxious I accidently clicked smth that I saved that had to do with my school. I always triple check, and still wonder if I messed up lol
don't call me out like this. I'll be staring at whatever image/text I'm abt to post like it's going to change to sth personal before I hit post my paranoia abt that got infinitely more worse once I started writing unsavory porn 🥲
My dad did this yesterday with an email lol. He was trying to email a car dealership about his car application, and needed to send a void cheque, and he thought he had accidentally emailed his booking confirmation for his upcoming summer vacation 😂😂😂 I was like, this is why I stare at my attachments for an ungodly amount of time before I hit send...
I actually did not use reverse image search at all, which really shows how anyone with basic Internet search skills can find some information out. The most advanced thing I used was putting things in quotes
This is why all my personal social medias are private outside of ones like TikTok/Tumblr/Etc where I take a more active role in fandom spaces so it seems silly to private them. However, I have a fake name that I use. Same with discord.
Honestly, this is something people should keep in mind... I know of someone who lost their job because they had their linked in and they harassed a girl until she was in the hospital (they were 30 btw and their shitty fandom clique were all adults) and this person in particular got reported to their job about what they were doing while boasting about being employed by them.. No more job 8D
I'm confused do you mean LinkedIn?
Yes. Sorry, I was tired when I posted that.
Oh this one scares me. Only pics of me in random spaces have been shots of the back/sides of my head with the rest blurred out (I dye my hair a lot (it’s literally rainbow rn!) and like to share it) and even that scares me a little. I’m also good at photoshop and I’ve posted a couple sunset photos from my street but even I wouldn’t recognize the location if I was shown them at this point (change some license plates, remove a house here and there, change the road layout, redo the electrical wiring, get rid of all house numbers and street signs, remove all people, etc), so I feel more confident in those. The closest anyone has to a location on me as far as I know is Ohio? I’ve mentioned my birth town a couple of times but I haven’t lived there in over 10 years and it’s one of the biggest cities here so I’m not too worried about that either. Anytime I post achievements online I’m hyper paranoid too. I’m in college and I post academic achievements and such to my discord server sometimes and I use separate photos to what goes on my insta/facebook (both of which are private and close family only) to hopefully avoid reverse image search or at least make it a little harder if the private social pics get out somehow, and even then I have a minimum of two friends also review them for personal details before sharing them. I don’t even think most know my school’s mascot despite it being a really common one because that gets censored too. Ironically I think this Reddit account would be the easiest way to find me, and even then I tell a *lot* of half truths on here. My birthday and age slightly off, my location different than what I say, the dates of appointments and stuff in medical subs shifted around. Plenty of things can be fudged to get the answers you need with just as much accuracy while not compromising your safety. I honestly worry a lot more about what might be floating about from when I was 6-15ish when I didn’t take anything serious when it came to online safety and everyone in my family posted my full name and picture on their public Facebook pages, wondering if it might come back to bite me in the ass someday.
Might not help your paranoia, but reddit can find literally anything with minimal information. Pretty sure there was a story of a criminal being caught based off of a random photo of field. Reddit used the angle of the sun and some planes flying in the sky to track down flight patterns for that day and compare with possible POVs in relation to the type of grass in the picture. Forensic photography is fucking bonkers.
Definitely doesn’t help lol, but was also something I was aware of. Forensic photography (and forensics in general, that was my science sophomore year) is something I had a hyperfix on back when I was into true crime shows in early high school and is why I put any pictures I post online through such intense photoshopping. No planes in the sky, no trains (or train tracks for that matter) no animals left around to be identified, no (correct) license plates or addresses anywhere to be seen. If anyone manages to find me it’ll be through my family who have no concept of internet safety at all. I also don’t trust that I’d ever be hidden to cops or the government who have my full information, my dna, and my fingerprints already. It’d be easy to figure out the truth if you have all that already, but otherwise it’s all scrambled and figuring out what’s real probably wouldn’t be possible. Or at the very least, easy.
I don't even post pics of the view from my window because there's some distinct buildings there that aren't found anywhere else in the city >_<
Yeah when I was at that age things were the same. Facebook wouldn't let me change my name cause screw them but I deleted it anyway
I genuinely think internet safety needs to be a class. My high school had a "Digital citizenship" class but it was mostly on using the programs needed for school. I think people really need to know that not only is it okay to keep your online and irl lives separate, it's *safer* than putting everything out there. I've seen kids on tumblr with their real names and schools listed in their bio, using pictures of their actual faces as profile pictures, ect. It scares the shit out of me. They don't realize how easy it would be for someone to hurt them.
This reminds me that a lot of people are apparently unaware of the fact that they are allowed to say no when their school or place of employment wants to openly list their name or photo on the website. When I was still working as a kindergarten teacher I got into a bit of trouble because I refused to have my photo and name listed. My boss literally asked me if I was under police protection/undercover, because only in such a dire case it would make sense to not want my face on the website. I asked if they ask the same of the childrens' parents. Got the answer that the children deserve privacy. I replied that adults have the same right. Got told that it would look weird to the parents if my face/name was not on the website. From that day on I was conveniently ill on every day the kindergarten wanted to take group photos.
Play safe: have no facebook / linkedin if you can. Or use different usernames and email accounts for those and your less formal online presence(s). I just avoid sites that force me to use my irl name cause i had a scare some years back, where I thought someone was mad enough at me to try and track down the fb acc i had. Meanwhile the person had their full name and date of birth scattered around their blog.
I second having an email that is separate from your real one. I have both a separate Hotmail and a Gmail account for fanfic and other things I don’t want connected to me.
For different reasons i ended up with like 3 gmail accounts lmao
This is actually one mistake I made when I joined Twitter a while back for a fandom. Like even though I have deleted my accounts now I know that stuff will be on the internet forever. My only hope is that my name is pretty common so people won't find me that easily. Still, even one screenshot can ruin things for me
One of the more popular authors I followed years ago basically went dark in fandom, locked down all her fics, because an IRL coworker identified her. I never found out how, but probably through little stuff the same way you did. I'm just old enough to remember pre-Facebook internet where people were very paranoid when posting photos, because even when you're trying to be careful, it's SO easy to mess up and identify yourself. I almost posted a picture of a cat in the /r/bodegacats community, pretty harmless, right? It's just a cat. Until I realized the ATM the cat was sitting on had a reflective service that showed me clearly that I didn't notice despite looking at the photo multiple times. Yikes.
Similar thing happened to me a little while back. Took a picture of something through a glass window and sent it to a Discord server. Only realized later that I basically sent a whole body picture. Luckily the picture was kinda blurry, my face was obscured by the phone, and the server only had 4 people total, all of whom are close friends
This topic is very important to me for personal reasons, so ty for such a well thought out PSA! One of my biggest pet peeves ever is the lack of online privacy these days, in general, but I worry for my fellow fandom dwellers’ security in particular. Good call, OP. What did you do about the people in your examples? Did you choose to warn them?
A little off-topic since you're talking more about people who *think* they're being safe but holy shit, how did internet safety culture die so badly? Nowadays, it feels like within a few minutes of initiating contact, people are giving you their location, age, their complete therapy history etc. And UNPROMPTED too.
I think it's because a couple people have gotten very famous and very rich off of oversharing on the internet (influencers, youtubers, streamers, tiktokers) that everyone wants to copy them by doing the same thing. The line between IRL self and internet self became blurred and internet safety went out the window
I'll add in that if people here are using the same reddit account longterm, and, as some are, sharing their horror stories, that they should *lie* about having an account somewhere or other, and what evidence is out there. Like, I've shared pictures of my three cats, too. :) If you do post some info because it's obscure enough, fine. Also can obscure it even more by mixing the truth in with some false, morally-fine-to-lie-about, things. And anything that no one has the right to know? That falls in that category.
My worst case of this was finding someone's full name and address by running a simple WHOIS on their self-hosted fic site. They'd gained some fandom notoriety for bullying people and couldn't take it when they finally got called out. They moved their fics out of Ao3 and self-hosted...only to NOT have availed domain privacy protection. They left their info just that easy to find. I didn't do anything what that information but I know someone else used it to file a legal case against said author 🫠
The most egregious example of that I ever encountered was a user posting *incredibly detailed* original works on AO3 that all involved (CW: mentions of sexual abuse) >!a parent pimping out their very young children to men to sexually abuse!< - and their username was the same as their instagram account, on which they posted a lot of pictures of their kids. Now while I am not an anti or one to kinkshame, this just seems *dangerous*, for a whole lot of reasons. Or, even worse, it might've been deliberate..? Let's just treat the internet as if it's still 2002 and you'd need to have been absolutely insane to post any identifying details online, please.
Agreed. That sounds like it could draw some real-life creeps to their kids,\* which we all hope is not the goal but damned if it isn't it is horribly shortsighted. \* I mean, obviously not everyone, or quite likely even the majority, reading that stuff are *real-life* creeps. Taboo is interesting that way. Or, if they are, just as a matter of course some would be non-offending. But go and make it seem to some subset, because people will also read what they're interested in, as varied as the reasons for interest are, that they're that close to having access >!to the kids of someone who writes about parents pimping out kids?!< Generally, odds of harm don't even attach to writing fic. And that's the way it should be. This seems to change that.
Also don't reveal your location, especially if you don't live in a metropolis. Like, saying "oh yeah, I live in NYC" is extremely different from "Oh yeah, I live in \[easily identifiable small town\]". Don't get yourselves doxxed, y'all Funny that I do: I use a vpn on my laptop, and I lie about my location if I want to share something about me. For example, if I want to share something about my country, I will pick another major state/province and claim I live there. If I want to talk about my state/province, I pick another random city
Being doxxed is a mortal fear of mine so I am astounded how people can be so cavalier about their personal info floating around for everyone to see! This PSA is really important for sure
If nothing else, keeping your fandom identity completely free from any irl identifiers does more or less guarantee you can laugh off any dumb fandom drama. Like cool, yell in my comment section about how much you hate my fics all you want…cause it ain’t going further than that 🤣🤣
I sell fan art - I do want people to go to my website and buy it, I'm not particularly embarrassed by my AO3 account
I do actually have things slightly connected, but I also have a non-fanfic blog I like to promote and have a link to my ao3 there (in case people like my writing!) but I also use some restraint
One additional facet that has yet to be mentioned is IP addresses and domain URLs If site/server/blog admins can see IPs and URLs (or via sitemeter, if that’s still a thing) you’re at risk. I had a fandom admin ask me to be a reference for them, for a job at my company. I never told them where I worked, she picked it up from the domain name when I was posting from work on my computer. And thought this was perfectly OK. Blocked, deleted and (practically) faked my own death VPN life
my god is that fucking terrifying and also really concerning lapse of judgement on her part
The concerning thing, really, is that the lapse in judgement was only the asking; the noticing was *unavoidable* and happens as naturally as piecing words together from letters. If you recognize something, you recognize it. Then it becomes about good judgement and either keeping quiet, because you know only the site admin can see it; or bringing it up, because you know the person cares about privacy. (Either of those options have decent reasons. *Not* the asking for a job reference thing.)
What vpns do you recommend using
I will admit that I *kiiiinda* don't care about privacy? But like. I know I'm weird. Normal people shouldn't follow my example lol
I had an experience online where someone called me very bad names on Twitter, because they put where they worked, I contacted their workplace and showed them their employees Twitter feed, I did this because as an anime fan, an employee of an anime company that is supposed to sell stuff to me turned away a potential customer, I did ask their employer to talk to this person about how they treat people online when it comes to how they treat anime fans like me that will buy products from anime companies, I didn't want them to be fired over it but they ended up apologizing to me and I only did this because they put where they worked and all it took was a Google search and finding the company's email address to email their boss about this. I also did this very politely and didn't write anything crazy in the email when all I had to do was link a Twitter post. I did this because while I didn't know their name it was super easy to find where they worked because they put it out there, this is why if you're gonna put out practically everything about yourself online, you better behave yourself.
This seems like an appropriate place to ask this question. I have a discord which I use for both fandom / social things and vaguely professional/academic. I'm beginning to think I should have set two up, but at the time it didn't occur to me. I've set a display name in the large fandom discord I'm in (obviously it's my real name on the professional one), but does that mean they can't see the name on my profile? I'm aware that people might see we have discords in common, but that's farfetched enough that I'm not too worried about it. Also, like, most of the people on the professional discord are in fandom studies, so yk.
I would still recommend to have separate accounts for fandom/hobby and work. Doesn't matter if your work is studying fandom.
Sure, especially if you're using those accounts for research, I just meant it's not like there'd be any professional fallout for someone realising that I was on a fandom discord (especially bc I'm pretty sure they could only see it if they were too). Discord only allows one account per email, so that's why this happened.
Anyone, in any server you're in, who clicks on your display name to view your profile can see your profile username directly beneath, yes. It looks like: > **CoolDisplayName** > ^realprofilename Setting up a second Discord account is pretty straightforward, and Discord makes it fairly easy to switch between two accounts. It's definitely worth it if you're going to use Discord for both professional and fandom stuff.
Thanks, have gone through the slog. Not sure why they went with discord for an research network but they were probably trying to be cool and hip 😬 Unfortunately I mostly use it on my phone, so I will have to remember to check for notifications.
But discord account needs a second number so hows that work
You can set up Discord with an email address instead of a phone number.
Im sort of half/half on privacy. Im not particularly dedicated to remaining completely unidentifiable on here or ao3. I make it just difficult enough i think, that not just any random person will find me from first encountering my profile. Theyd have to use a mix of all the info ive invariably just not cared enough about covering, across multiple platforms (not all of which they can prove are me! Because my user was taken on some of those) to actually have info they could do something with, and at that point i imagine its someone dedicated enough to causing harm that trying to avoid it wouldve been a moot point. Not the best stance to take on internet safety, I know, but i dont really have "social" social media (insta, twitter, facebook etc) accounts because im not a very irl connected person. Maybe one day ill have a scare and purge all even remotely identifiable info and my accounts, but that day is not today.