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Managing Your Online Identity
DHS Odium
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Well, how do you do it?
I've very recently started thinking more about my presence on the web, and decided to start consolidating accounts and cleaning things up. No, not language - the ridiculous things I say on PA and elsewhere are my gift to the world. Things like email addresses (I had 7), and accounts at places like Digg, Facebook, Blogger, etc. It just become too much to keep track of - I have photos hosted in various places all over the web, my now outdated personal website just links to the various photo albums because the free host ran out of space. I have accounts for services I don't even use. So now, I am sculpting my online identity to something actually resembling a form.
My 7 email addresses are being condensed down to just 3, my personal ones (primary gmail, secondary hotmail), and my work email. As a side note, it's an absolute bitch to switch from one gmail account to another (I didn't like the old name) and deal with 4 years of poorly managed email (hello 3000 messages I now need to archive/delete/sort).
I'm dropping my Delicious and Digg accounts, because I never use them. I have a Twitter account that is completely useless, but I'm keeping it for the time being. Two Facebook accounts have become 1. Blogger is out, I still need to transfer my old Picasa albums to my new Flickr account, and remove my Google Page (now Site).
I have 6 IM screen names, yet I'm only able to easily drop one of them.
How does everyone handle all of this stuff? Does anyone care? I love to hear some methods and best practices for keeping your presence on the web in check.
I've very recently started thinking more about my presence on the web, and decided to start consolidating accounts and cleaning things up. No, not language - the ridiculous things I say on PA and elsewhere are my gift to the world. Things like email addresses (I had 7), and accounts at places like Digg, Facebook, Blogger, etc. It just become too much to keep track of - I have photos hosted in various places all over the web, my now outdated personal website just links to the various photo albums because the free host ran out of space. I have accounts for services I don't even use. So now, I am sculpting my online identity to something actually resembling a form.
My 7 email addresses are being condensed down to just 3, my personal ones (primary gmail, secondary hotmail), and my work email. As a side note, it's an absolute bitch to switch from one gmail account to another (I didn't like the old name) and deal with 4 years of poorly managed email (hello 3000 messages I now need to archive/delete/sort).
I'm dropping my Delicious and Digg accounts, because I never use them. I have a Twitter account that is completely useless, but I'm keeping it for the time being. Two Facebook accounts have become 1. Blogger is out, I still need to transfer my old Picasa albums to my new Flickr account, and remove my Google Page (now Site).
I have 6 IM screen names, yet I'm only able to easily drop one of them.
How does everyone handle all of this stuff? Does anyone care? I love to hear some methods and best practices for keeping your presence on the web in check.
Wii U: DHS-Odium // Live: DHS Odium // PSN: DHSOdium // Steam: dhsykes // 3DS: 0318-6615-5294
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I'll remove my accounts from places that I just don't need. If there is no easy way to delete an account, I'll send an email to support for that site requesting my account be deleted. I move those account logins into a special folder. if I haven't heard back by the next time I do a sweep, I log in and obfuscate any and all information related to my account. I've only had to do that twice on some pretty meaningless sites. Most places will remove accounts, even with a little "but WHY?!?!" crying on their parts.
I'm aided by the fact that my firstname lastname combination is very common. While most folks would look at my last name and think "unique!" it turns out that it's actually the Polish version of Smith or Jones. Googling my name will show that I am a real estate agent in Chicago, a high school student from Michigan, a marathon runner from Utah and a mortician in Canada.
As far as social networking goes, I'm locked down. Searching my name on Facebook turns up a couple of completely unrelated people with my same name. If you aren't friends with me, you don't see me -- not even on a mutual friends list. I'm a godamned ghost. I have a Twitter account that is protected -- you can't read my tweets unless I give the A-OK first. I also don't use my real name as my display name there.
I don't have some kind of false sense of being invisible online. If you are posting in a public environment somewhere (yes, PA Forums counts under this heading) then you have made a calculated decision to cede a little bit of privacy (someone finds out your PA Forums name) for some degree of enjoyment (I get to talk to you fucks... again).
That password program seems neat, but I've never had an issue with remembering or actually managing the accounts I do have.
It's mostly how people can find me, or how they (or I) view my place on the internet. I'm all for PA people, or other random internet users contacting me, or long lost friends finding out who I am and trying to reconnect. I have the appropriate solutions in place to deal with all of that - I guess I don't want too many fragments of my information all over the place - information overload. With no real need for a blog, anything I'd post like that goes to Facebook with people I actually know, same with photos. My new Flickr account will be for public viewing for colleagues or family that won't have Facebook accounts, or that I don't want to add. I imagine my Facebook & Flickr photo albums will be near identical - just for different demographics. I want targeted outlets for what I do and say, and for whom the audience may be.
Cleaning up an organizational mess that I made. For instance, I removed a blog I was required to keep for a class that details our work. I don't need that useless information out there, especially if people are actively trying to find me (Hence my second Facebook account (the "professional" one) being removed in favor of LinkedIN).
I keep my AIM account to talk to one person. I hardly ever remember to open the program, and we're Facebook friends so we do communicate that way now and again. He's also my only consistent (if you can call it that) tie to my old friends from high school. In pursuit of a minimal computing experience I'm actually surprised I haven't junked my IM client yet.
It's not so much about remembering as it is about never knowing. I couldn't tell you the password to my bank accounts if you stuck a gun to my temple and started playing Russian Roulette: I simply don't know the password. I can tell you that it's 45 characters long and involves mixed case alphanumerics and symbols. It's certainly an unnecessary level of complexity but I like knowing that. Using 1Password also means that I don't need to use the same password for any site ever. I tell it to randomly generate a password when I join a site and off we go. If my password to one site -- no matter the depth of information available about my person -- is compromised, I know I don't have to change the password to 60 other sites that I don't remember the login to in the first place.
This is very much in line with an old poster around these parts, stilist. He was big on controlling what information was exposed to what level of folk; and it sounds like you both have similar philosophies. I share that too, to some extent. My Facebook albums and Flickr albums are very different places simply by the audience I'm in touch with in both places; albums of my buddies and I getting hammered won't appear on my Flickr stream but will appear on my Facebook stream.
This just reminds me. My professor for my videography class wants us to upload a fake PSA we're making to YouTube. I've got use my real name for it so she can track credit or whatever. I've got major issues doing this. I tried explaining it to her and just got a blank stare. I suggested using Vimeo (where many of us in her class already have accounts from other educational endeavors) but for some reason she insisted it cost money (I checked: for the way we'd be using it, no one would have to pay a dime). It's a big aggravating.
I can see how this could be useful, but for the most part the audiences for my social networking sites are kept completely separate.
I don't necessarily want people following me on Twitter to have a link to my Facebook profile. I definitely don't want people looking at my LinkedIn looking at either of those.
You can always make it so your profile (be it on Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, etc. really) is only viewable by friends.
Yes, but now they know I have a profile. This can create awkwardness in social situations where I may have turned down someone's request in the past and they've forgotten or they're hurt that I haven't sought them out on <insert site here> before.
Like I said. I can see the utility for some people. It's not for me.
It serves me well and it functions as a personal online portfolio. :-)
The owners of that website are so minimalistic that their website doesn't even exist! :P
I fucking hate when site owners don't use the 'www.' prefix. Or don't even have the decency to redirect it to the root domain. I get the irony in bitching about this RE: minimalism, but fuck. This behavior is nowhere near ubiquitous and I've never seen it actually help anything.
Stop trying to sell me on this. You're starting to sound like a shill.
Uh, not really. There are several services that offer the same basic service. I was just trying to show you how easy it is to have an online portfolio that manages your online identity.
No, that site (and others like it) don't manage my online identity. That suggests that I can change details of each account from that 'master' site and control who exactly sees and doesn't see what information for each 'slave' site. These sites are just working as a catch-all, I cannot manage my online identity here. I can only pile them all together and going "look at me!" from one site instead of pointing at the individual sites and going "look at me from this perspective I need you to view me from. I fail to see the utility in having a site like that capturing all my accounts when I can just as easily point someone to my LinkedIn profile for professional purposes, Facebook for old friends/family, Twitter for online friends etc.
See how many books I've read so far in 2010
I lock the computer when I leave with Winkey+L and unlock it when I come back with a fingerprint swipe.
Has that gotten better in Vista/Win7? I bought a fingerprint scanner when Microsoft first came out with one (and when I still used Windows) and it was a joke to fool it.
I picked up this reader and plugged it in on my Win7 x64 install. It recognized the device in seconds, then I pressed start and typed in "finger" and selected "Use my Fingerprints with Windows". I went through a simple enrollment process where I scanned whatever fingers I wanted a few times, then everything was good to go. It's all built seamlessly into Windows.
When I lock the computer, a fingerprint icon comes up on the screen and I can swipe once and the computer will unlock with no extra keypresses or clicking. You can also sign in from a computer restart with a swipe. The only time it ever failed to recognize a swipe (out of hundreds of times) is when my finger was wet. And even then it succeeds most of the time. It makes it basically effortless to sign in. Just one swipe as you're sitting down and you're good to go.
Anyway, it is pretty awesome and between this and LastPass the number of passwords I have to type in has been drastically reduced.
(edit) As for security, that depends on the reader. I think the one I linked uses a capacitance strip for the swiping process, which I believe can be fooled by a gelatin/silicone mold constructed from a fingerprint, but really IMO anyone that dedicated deserves my data.
It's easier than you think. Gmail gives me GChat. Everyone at worked used Yahoo, so I had to get that. I need a Hotmail/Live account for my 360, so there's another one. AIM I've been using forever, and was my first main IM program (except for ICQ which I don't use anymore). I had a second hotmail account which I've deactivated but that gave me one too. I also have Skype. There's Facebook chat if you really want to count that.
It's funny I made this thread now, as the next day I got a Facebook friend request from a cousin of mine. I was really hesitant to add her, as the only family on there is my brother. I added her, but I'm not sure how that'll pan out, I'm vulgar and a raging atheist, and she's from the side of the family that I consider puritans - though she was always pretty cool. My worlds are colliding.
Realistically, though, you have two. The Yahoo one, and the AIM one. Do you chat at all on the others? I have one IM account, two e-mail addresses (one personal, one professional), one facebook, one twitter (which I pretty much just use to follow other users), a PSN account, and a microsoft live account. It's not really all that confusing or challenging to deal with.
I mean, you could say that I have 5 accounts there that could be used to instant message. But I'd say, I only use that one dedicated IM account for it. The others serve their own purposes.
As for myself, I have one Bebo profile that I never use (and only signed up for to keep up with friends from college anyway), two e-mail addresses (my original Hotmail one that I don't really use anymore, and my Gmail one), a Facebook profile, one AIM/YIM/Skype account each, one Photobucket account, one DeviantArt account. I think that's it in terms of my online identity, not including, of course, forum accounts. I have three handles to use with whatever site/forum I join up with, the use of which depends on if I want to be found by people.
All in all I find it pretty easy to manage the above.
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
This is what I do. I have an account that is five+ years old and is used as my login to mail/reader/calendar/etc. I don't like the name any more, but I don't want to get rid of it, since I have so many services and so much data associated with it. So I created a new account with a different name, and I just forward all mail from the latter account to the former. I can still use the original one as a login and when I sign up for forums and such, but I have the other as an option as well.
XBL |Steam | PSN | last.fm
If you forward the e-mail to username+atag@gmail.com, it will still be sent to username@gmail.com, but you can create a gmail filter for To:username+atag@gmail.com in order to label it\skip the inbox\etc.
It's also awesome for signing up for websites, forums, etc. so you can categorize what gets sent to you.
Both? The former isn't stupid, it directly relates to the second part of your misguided post. If you have too many accounts, your information is in too many places and you're bound to forget about some account that may have a detail of you'd like not to get out.
Wow, just like that 2002 post you're so worried about
See how many books I've read so far in 2010
Two Facebook accounts were the result of having a completely locked down one for friends only, but still wanting a public one with general information for coworkers or family to look at/interact with. It never really got used so I deactivated it. I'll rely on LinkedIN for coworkers or potential employers down the line, and the only real reason to have a public profile anywhere for my family would be for pictures - which my new Flickr account is for.
My initial concern (however unfounded it might be) was that I have all these little portions on the internet seemingly separated, that if someone searched for me by name for more information (say coworker or current/future employer) they would see fractured information that may or may not actually even be mine. Or something long forgotten. I wanted to control my "presence" on the web much like a dictator. Someone searches for me? They'll get a Facebook account - which they can't view unless they're people I'm friends with and have actually met in real life. They'll get a LinkedIN account that's only relevant to them if they're looking to professionally network, and a Twitter account that's unused (until I find a reason for it). And finally, they'll get public photo albums - my pictures don't normally include people in them (and certainly not myself), so the goal here is to just admire the photography.
To me, that seems simple. I can keep track of it. Just a few years ago I had none of this stuff, and no need to control and condense, and maybe it's a bit early to do, but I foresee more and more accounts for all the new and cool websites or applications that will pop up. In ten years time? I'd rather have a plan and have taken control of it before there's just content overload.
Things can't as easily be forgotten as years pass and we're adjusting to the idea that nothing is forgotten anymore in the internet. People are already facing consequences from what they do online or choose to share with the world, with the new generation I think these things will be understood, and people won't care that you had a beer on the weekend if you're a teacher (and had a photo taken), but unfortunately people now do care. It's stupid, but it happens. I also don't want unfinished work, or an personal website that hasn't been updated in years still being available to view. It doesn't reflect who I am anymore or where I'm at, and so there's no reason for me to allow others access to it.
lol, didn't you sign up a week ago? why the hostility?
What does my signing up a week ago have to do with my opinion on anything? Nevermind that reading my sig is apparently too difficult for you; I've been around for some time.
Quit coming back just to troll me in this thread. Feel free to PM me any response you've got, but quit shitting up this thread.
Also I try not to consolidate my online identity - if I sign up for something to play with PA people I'll use my ELM name, but actually I don't want to strong a link between me online and my real self online (which has now become substantial).
There's a lot of irony in the person saying things like "The former is just stupid, who even cares?" trying to call someone out on being hostile.
I agree with that. My forum name I use for gaming and other forums and such, and real name for everything else, I can't really think of a way to link the two together, other than my AIM account, which again, only personal friends have. I think beyond PA, it's only viewable on Facebook.
Google for my documents, e-mail, photos, calender, ect and Google Voice for my Cell Phone / Skype.
Every other website I am not so concerned with, i'll log on to those when I need to (though having a portable version of Firefox on your USB with the sites pre bookmarked makes it easier when using computers that are not yours).
http://steamcommunity.com/id/Cykstfc