Read this article about an adjunct professor at Southern Methodist University and an employee at a Toronto law firm. They each blogged under a pseudonym. One about race issues, the other critical of the university. Their bosses figured it out and they were both dismissed. Although that wasn't the purported reason...
So beware... if you don't want your boss to read it, you probably shouldn't be blogging it.
Obvious? Yes. But it's oh so tempting to think no one will figure out who you are. Remember Jessica Cutler, aka Washingtonienne? Course she got a Playboy spread and a book deal out of her much publicized exit from Sen. Mike DeWine's (R - OH) office. Damn... why isn't life fair??
UPDATE: See comments below. Dave Taylor makes a good point that sometimes you need to be anonymous when you want to bring to light serious problems in your workplace, whether it's sexual harassment or criminal activity (think, er, Enron).
My response is this: perhaps blogging isn't the way to do it - unless you can be truly anonymous. There are both technical and practical considerations to remaining anonymous. See the Electronic Frontier Foundation's guide to How to Blog Safely. Also useful, a technical guide to anonymous blogging posted on Global Voices.
See also Reporters Without Borders' Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents.
Previous Comments
Dave Taylor said on March 14, 2006 at 12:55 AM
I’ll disagree with you, Debbie. In some cases, anonymity is necessary. If you’re complaining about aggressive racism in the workplace, for example, or the presence of organized crime in the workplace, publishing under your own name can be quite literally life-threatening.
Further, I think it’s up to each person to decide if they want to create an online persona, hide behind the protection of a nom de plume, or whatever.
Alan Gutierrez said on March 17, 2006 at 01:45 PM
There are already algorithms that can determine writing style. It may become trivial to index a fingerprint of writing style, and find authors with similiar writing styles, or search for content based on a sample writing style. At that point anonymity is gone.
Until then you simply have the vast number of readers of the web making correlations. If what you write is supposed to ruffle feathers, espeically in your circles, the desire to discover your identity is great, the associations will be made.
The only way to stay truely anonymous is to say nothing, or at the very least say nothing interesting.
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Shuttle said on July 27, 2009 at 05:59 AM
Blogging in my opinion is a habit and fun activity. If blogging can make money, it just side effect of good article we post. Let say it just bonus.
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