I was looking through my friends' blogs and came across a post that was a bit frightening. Sagerats was writing about some information she got from her sitemeter. I have a statcounter but no sitemeter on my blog. Apparently, you can find information about the people that visit your blog-- like the site they came from and the site they went to after visiting.
I know Amy (DandelionSeeds) has mentioned at length about internet safety as well...and using safe codes for our children. If you haven't already thought about nicknames or using the safecode, maybe now would be a good time to do that.
Also, AmyBeth has written a good post on The Company Porch on how to keep your blog from showing up on a Google Search. I haven't done this yet, but I will now! I was rather surprised at church last night when a friend mentioned that they had come across my blog! What??? No one at church knows about my blog. Apparently, they were doing a search on radiant barrier paint (which I mentioned in a previous post complaining about my electric bill). Zoiks! No telling what I've talked about in previous posts that could lure some sicko to my site (implies no reference to my friend at church).
I hope this has given some of y'all food for thought. I know we can't live in fear or anything, but it doesn't hurt to take some simple measures to increase our privacy. And be careful which words you choose to use in your writings...at least throw those weird a*ster*isk*s* or other symbols to mix things up.
Speaking of privacy...
On Sunday night, someone charged 1.00 to our credit card. The fraud department notified us since the transaction detail only came through with a bunch of letters (instead of a store name, etc). We were told that it is common for a low amount such as a dollar to be used to "test" the card first...before further fraudulent charges are made. I am SO thankful that they found it in time and we were able to cancel our card immediately and reissue a new one! So be sure to always check your statements VERY carefully! Our cards have been in our possession so I have no idea where this fraud originated.
I promise a peppier post tomorrow (hopefully!). :-)
Love,
Marsha
3 comments:
I've been thinking for weeks about going over to my son's neglected blog and removing some pictures he posted. I guess I should go do that right now.
~C
I felt like being "high tech" with those abbreviations... uhh, that distracted me from what I was about to comment... um, let's see... oh yeah. Scrapbooking, internet safety and credit card fraud.
I am with you all the way, we WILL do this scrapbooking thing when we're all grown up...
I think I'm ignorant on the whole internet safety issue, I don't want to become paranoid, but then again better safe than sorry. At this point, I don't think we're too much at risk, but I'm definitely open to any suggestions. (I don't have "spare" time to follow all those links at the moment, I'll have to do that later) hehehe :)
We've had several credit card frauds on our cards. I think it comes somehow off the internet. But, really, I have no idea either. However, I am just pretty careful to check my statements every month. As I'm always worried the stores here won't figure out the exchange right and will end up charging us 3x as much! (We don't use it to incur debt, we just use it to stack up air miles!) For awhile there I had $20 false charges every month from some computer software company or something. But we got that taken care of I guess, it hasn't happened in a long time.
Okay, you'd think that this was my blog or something by how I'm just going on and on and on and on....
Thanks for stopping by my blog and for your fun comments.
:)
Amy
Cajamarca, Peru
I worried about that, too, when I set up my blog. Of course, my biggest fear is that someone from one of our churches will read something and get offended! I do try to behave in what I post!
On the other hand, we had a supporter who had lost contact with us due to moving and he found us again through my blog.
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