Privacy and Blogging

Mid-Century Modern Moms has a thought-provoking post up today.  Sylvia Wrigley says, "children of the future may be searching on each others photographs, matching based on facial features in a way we can't conceive of now.  Perhaps you'll see google searches matching based on the IP address from which the blog files were uploaded.  It's not that I was foolish enough to use his real name, it's that I couldn't second guess how things were going to move on."

Joining blogmanity late in the game, I thought long and hard about how to make this blog mine without sacrificing my children's privacy on the alter of the internet.  My kids are old enough to know what a blog is (two of them have their own blogs) and to realize the repercussions of having just anything out there on the www for anyone to see.  So I don't use full names, not even mine and I check google regularly to make sure this site doesn't come up attached to my name.  But I do post pictures because my main reason for starting a blog is so that people we love who live far far away can see the kids and how they're doing.

My biggest decision was to allow the kids to read my blog.  They don't read it often and we talk about it when they do read it but it keeps me from posting things in anger and the heat of the moment that I might regret later.  I talk about some of my frustrations here but always things that I have already talked about with them and the posts that directly relate to them, I let them read before I post.  And I always keep in mind that this is not a journal, it is completely public and wide open to everyone and as much as I try to keep it private, it may come back to me in the future.  Remembering this with every post has - so far - kept me from making a total and complete fool out of myself.  (I'm ok with being a partial fool.)

So anyone else out there struggle with this issue?