Social networking sites

[TGMarla]

Really, the advent of social networking sites is phenomenal. They give one the ability to stay in touch with friends and family that we don't often call or talk to, or even easily renew contact with people we may not have seen or even thought about in years. Often, this can be a real good thing. The Facebook page I have in guy-mode has been fun, and has allowed me to talk to some people from way back in high school. Some of these people weren't exactly in my circle of friends back then, but time has removed that "clique" thing, and made it irrelevant.

Many of us have accounts on MySpace or Flickr, Facebook, or any number of other such sites. Most often, they are associated with one of the big account-style sites such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN. Nearly all of them will default to an invasive kind of information gathering that allows the account to reveal your presence to anyone in your contacts lists that you commonly use with your email. When you sign up in them, and answer innocuous questions like "Where did you go to high school?", this information is then made available to anyone else who answered this question the same way you did. This way, your graduating class can find you again and say hello.

Now, there are those of us who really don't give a rip who knows we crossdress. Some of us are much more out to the public than others. Some of us are not. But it would be wise to be aware of these things when creating these accounts on any of these social networking sites. They are convenient for us in providing a way for us to blog and post pictures, and interact with like-minded people. But others may stumble across them, and suddenly this little world of ours is not so little anymore.

This morning, I received an email alert that someone had commented on a picture of me on one of these sites. I had begun to form a "My Life" account, and decided that it was one too many, and bagged it. I really did not think it was active. But it was, and it was associated with two of my email addresses, and at some time I must have answered that "high school" question. In any case, the comment was from someone I had gone to high school with, and I had not even thought of since. He was an irritating runt back then, and I really don't give a crap about him now.

Curious about it, I clicked on the email link leading me to the comment, and up popped a rather nice picture of me in Marla-mode, with the comment from this person from yester-year, "What the hell happened?" Great. Now my graduating class from 1978 either knows I crossdress, or thinks I've had a sex-change. Who knows who else this person is in contact with? Now to be fair, I didn't care about this person then, and I really don't now. And there are somewhere between none and ten people from back then that I even remotely care about now. But it is a nice wake-up call for using caution when putting these accounts together on these sites. Be careful with what information you let out to the public, because you never know who's watching.

I went ahead and deleted the account. In the future, I hope I can be careful enough to keep my two faces to the world separate. I don't mind others meeting me as Marla, but I want to control how this happens, and not let some silly website decide this for me.

[Phyliss]

"Where did you go to High School?"

Many years ago I answered that same sort of question on a non "networking site" and, gee, for some strange reason about a month later I get a letter in the mail looking for donations to the alumni assn.

Since then I DO NOT put up anything anywhere. If somebody from my past sees me here, then, well, we know why they're here.

[Shelly Preston]

Hi Marla

I can see how much of a shock to the system that could be

Seems like we need to be a little more careful with those sites

Thanks for the reminder Marla :hugs:

[wendy360]

If its on the web anyone can find it and companies like yahoo, google and msn sell your information to other companies with the explanation that they can send you things you might be interested in. You need to be very carefull what and how you post things on the web.

[docrobbysherry]

Closet CDs beware! Good post, Marla! U can't be too careful! If u wish to keep your CD persona secret from your "REAL life" side!:eek:

I even use a DIFFERENT SERVER for emails related to my CDing! To try and avoid mistakes that could OUT me!:brolleyes:

My Myspace account is for Sherry only. Facebook for Robert only!

When u get as old as I, it's EASY to forget, and MESS UP!:sad:

[VeronicaMoonlit]

Although I'm much more open now than I was, this is why I've had two primary e-mail addresses since I came on the net. I want a little bit of control about who knows, and when. Though I don't mind people knowing and if I ever actually start my transition, I'll have to tell even more people.

Veronica
Rondelle (Ron) Rogers Jr.

[Sarah Doepner]

Marla, I feared the same thing when I started to do a Facebook page for Sarah. The darn program wanted to populate the contact list with everyone who I had ever had contact with. I stopped right then, didn't post anything and tried looking for a way to kill the page. I couldn't find one and hope that it will die a quiet death from neglect.
I would hope that someday I can find a way to utilize social networks without compromising a smidgen of my privacy, but until then I'm outta there!

[Fab Karen]

Even facebook, which is more rigid than other sites, allows you to keep all info private if you wish. And the "add contacts from your lists" feature you can say yes or NO to. It isn't a requirement. BTW, on most of these sites you DON'T have to say where you went to school, again it is a CHOICE to do so.

[Ralph]

That was the first thing I did when I created a crossdressing blog and an account here - I also used a throwaway free email site for my address, and I never use that address for anything except the crossdressing biz. People who know me as ralph will never know me as {insert real name here}, and people who know me as {insert real name here} will never meet Ralph.

The CD privacy aside, I walk a fine line with social networking sites. I hate them, but some of my friends have no other connection to the wired world so if I want to email them, I have to use Facebook. I also want long-lost friends to find me, so I have to make available just enough personal identifying details so that people I want to find me, can, without making myself the next identity theft victim.

And here's a news tip for all my friends who share every moment of their lives with me on FB: I don't care how many damn cows you own on your stupid game farm. I'd love to hear how your kids are doing, how's your health, your job, etc. but I'm not interested in playing those stupid games myself so I sure don't want to watch other people playing.

[TGMarla]

And here's a news tip for all my friends who share every moment of their lives with me on FB: I don't care how many damn cows you own on your stupid game farm. I'd love to hear how your kids are doing, how's your health, your job, etc. but I'm not interested in playing those stupid games myself so I sure don't want to watch other people playing.
Why would you give these friends a tip like that here on this site, when they will never know your CD identity? I rather agree with the sentiment, but it's only a small amusement provided by FB and their associates, and it's harmless.

[Mandyflcd]

Things like this happen because of something called Data Mining. I am sure you've probably all heard about it in the news. Lots of companies use this practice to gather information about people but it is used most often in sales / marketing to put together lists of potential customers to sell to other companies needing marketing lists. A very very basic rundown of how this works is as follows...

You have two websites; site1 and site2. Each site asks for different information but there is one or two fields in common. For example, site1 asks for name, birth date, email address, phone number, and gender. Site2 asks for name, birth date, address, city, high school, college, etc.

Now you have a data mining application that scours the net and reads the public databases for the two sites you registered on. It finds the matching fields for name and birth date so it creates a combined entry containing all of that information together. So now a single database contains ALL your information that it has gathered from multiple websites that are not connected to each other in any way.

You can see how things can be a problem for people with two "identities" that they want to keep separate. It is VERY hard to keep things separate in these cases... for example, how many of you signed up for a Flickr account under your girl name but then paid for a pro account using a credit card registered in your boy name? Another example, how many of you have an ebay account in your girl name but pay for winning auctions using a paypal account with a bank account registered to your boy name?

In some cases this is OK because those sites protect your privacy information because it is related to financial transactions. In other cases, the information is not deemed private (how many of you actually read the user licenses for sites you sign up on?) and it is published in ways that data mining applications can get to.

Yes, I studied data mining in great depth in a computer security course in college. :D

The only way to be positively sure that your two identities do not becoming merged in a database somewhere is to practice 100% separation between the two. That means use a fake birthday, fake address, etc... fake everything! Oh, and also to access your different websites from different computers, on different networks, with different IP addresses and different hostnames. :P

[Ralph]

.
Why would you give these friends a tip like that here on this site, when they will never know your CD identity? I rather agree with the sentiment, but it's only a small amusement provided by FB and their associates, and it's harmless.
I'm just venting, Marla. I do in fact turn off the announcements on FB. I'm also aware that it is not my friends' decision to post those constant updates every time they fart... FB just assumes I want that level of detail and dumps it on me until I tell it to stop. My gripe isn't really so much against a specific feature that can be turned off, it's against the greater problem of turning the simple act of keeping in touch with people you care about into a competitive game. It's the farm growth and the mafia wars and flagging articles as "liked" and assigning point values to everything under the sun... what's wrong with just asking a friend how he's doing?

[TGMarla]

There's absolutely nothing at all wrong with that, Ralph. That's what's the best thing about sites like that. But the people running it just dumped a few games and such for personal amusement on there, that's all.

But we digress.... I was just concerned about how easily one could get inadvertently outed if not careful with them, that's all. I went back and made sure that any accounts I had with any of them are linked only to my femme interests, and the regular stuff is linked only to my regular accounts. Sometimes it's difficult to remember where the line is drawn. Too bad there has to be a line. Too bad people aren't as a rule more open minded and accepting of transgender lifestyles. Too bad one doesn't notice such a thing, and think "Oh....that's cool."

[gender_blender]

I was outed in high school after something similar happened to me online. I used it as a platform for coming out. The worst reaction you can have is to delete an account once discovered. No doubt you've seen what happens to people who attempt to hide facts about themselves.

Or you can join fetlife, which is essentially made for alternative lifestyle socializing.

[TGMarla]

In this particular case, though, it was an account for a site that I had no intention of keeping active. And the person who saw the picture was someone that I have literally not seen nor cared about one whit in over 30 years. So I deleted the account, and I won't miss it.

[Maia Saturn]

Anything I have on the internet associated with my femme side is "blocked" or "shaded" by isolated email addresses and IP maskers. I have my reasons, and they are many. It's simple. Make a gmail account and link everything to that. Then in that gmail account have all the mail forwarded to your real email account.

In other words, make a femme character and never let her cross over into the boy character that is you. Link only through that one outlet and you never have to worry about this stuff. Unless you don't care that much...

[Fab Karen]

If a site asks for highly private info. like phone # and snail-mail address, be sure it is for a good reason- most sites DON'T.

[JenniferR771]

OMG! That was scary. I just Googled my screen name under images . Yup--my avatar pic was first--then many many other avatars.
Lucky my real name just brought up a lot of people who share my name. Facebook seemed too public for me--decided to not enter much and no pics.

[Sara Jessica]

OMG! That was scary. I just Googled my screen name under images . Yup--my avatar pic was first--then many many other avatars.
Lucky my real name just brought up a lot of people who share my name. Facebook seemed too public for me--decided to not enter much and no pics.

OMG, scary is rightt!!!

For the record, adding "Jessica" to my first name "Sara" was kind of an afterthought, a name I've always liked but not really necessary until differentiation from all of the other women named "Sara" out there became required.

So I'm thinking, "I'll do a google image search and all of these pictures of Sarah Jessica Parker will come up along with a splattering of my mug".

47 pages of images later, NONE OF ME!!!

It might be because I don't tag my pictures with a name. Typically I just use a variation of whatever my camera names it.

But this does give me pause when it comes to creating a flickr site, something I've been toying with.

[randi.dixon]

I am just coming out and on the Net. I have a completely separate account for emails and what not. My Fiance purchases all of my clothes with her Cards.

[Nicole Erin]

I have a facebook account, hoestly, I set it up mostly just to kind of check things out. Of course I put in as little info as required. The name is not accurate nor is the birthday.

If you wasnt to protect your privacy on the web as much as you can, you have to lie about a lot of things.

[dragdoll]

deleted my myspace
deleted my yahoo360
deleted all my face pics from flickr
no facebook
no personal info posted anywhere
DELETE DELETE DELETE.

[AngieLove]

Unfortunately deleting doesn't always solve the problem. As anyone who uses Google knows, they have the cashed versions of sites, which are basically copies of what a site used to look like. Also there are places that contain a lot of web history on them. Once something is on the web it can be found again in most cases.
Just be careful what you put out there.