Blog Safety at Friday, November 07, 2008

Many of you have probably seen this story or something like it. I even emailed it to some of you. It is important to understand the basics of blog safety. Before I go on I would like to tell you a story.

The "Jones" family lived approximately four blocks from me growing up, they had a daughter my age, my grade. We met somewhere around 9th grade, friend of a friend thing. As a group we'd hang out and occasionally someone would suggest going over to her house. She always declined. I later came to find out that they were not allowed to have anyone over unless dad was home. Mom was always home but no one was allowed inside their house. Over a year later I finally entered their home, one Saturday dad was home and we got to come in. We watched a movie and then daughter got called back into the back room to talk. She came back and told us that dad said we had to leave.

The pre-elementary siblings weren't allowed to go to friends houses either, they could only play with neighbors at home in the yard, but of course they couldn't come inside. Phone time was very limited and they had to ask permission before they could call anyone. Incoming calls always went to the answering machine and if the recipient got permission they could call the person back. They were not however strict on TV time. They could watch pretty much anything any time, and had an extensive VHS collection, including many R rated movies.

Daughter was often absent from school and I always suspected that she was kept home. As you can probably guess she didn't have many friends. I lived a few blocks away for 4 years and never knew she existed.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they were in witness protection or that they are today living with a militia group in Montana.

Now why did I spend all this time talking about a family I haven't heard from in over ten years? Because they were paraniod to the extreme. Don't let that sensationalism from ksl drive you down the Jones path.

Lately ksl has been really bad about reporting on things like this. Dangers in blogging, The dangers of energy drinks part 1 and part 2 and Heating your house could be making your kids sick. Look at ksl's archives and you'll find a hundred more. I'm still waiting for "The dangers of dihydrogen monoxide" (if you don't know about that one be sure to check it out).

As for real blog safety, I'll put up a post soon with some useful information, not just a bunch of stories to scare people.