Family Privacy Practices: Claire


My family was always very cautious about what information was put online and what the privacy policy for the family was. I imagine much of that fear and tension was cultivated by the countless chatroom horror stories that dominated the airtime on the 6pm national news. I was never allowed to go on sites that host chatrooms that match you to talk to complete strangers by chat, webcam, or both, like Omegle for example. Honestly, I never had a problem with that rule as a child… those websites freaked me out too, so I was more than happy to stay away from them. Additionally, we were never to post anything super personal online; like address, full name, what school we went to, and even, depending on the website, what city we live in. Again, I think much of this fear stemmed from the abduction stories that are constantly in the news, and frankly, I don’t blame my parents for establishing these (totally reasonable) rules… the internet is forever, and it’s better to be safe than sorry. 
In terms of how porous or impermeable these family-wide disclosure rules were; I believe as I got older, my parents became less and less involved with my online activities and let me fend for myself …. But always with the understanding that I would respect the boundaries in place or face the consequences. If anything would have ever gone wrong, however, and I found myself in a situation I couldn’t handle, my family would of course have helped me get out of it, but I always knew that whatever I did online could have a consequence. 
These family practices have definitely influenced my approach to/opinion on online privacy and what information should be shared where, if ever. Even on my personal Facebook I have very limited personal information posted; I purposely decided to omit my phone number and email as a privacy precaution. Also, I chose to disable automatic geo-tagging on all of my posts because I didn’t like the thought of anybody on my friend list to know my exact location at all times. Where my position on personal privacy differs from my parents is; I chose to restrict access to my internet persona because of a desire to keep my private life just that… private, not out of fear of the boogeyman.

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