this kid is 14 oh my god is no one teaching children to protect themselves online anymore…

Meanwhile us olds are like: I don’t have a carrd and I’m not reading yours

Please don’t advertise your personal information, anyone could find that and use it however they want.

Oh my fucking god it isn’t 1998 anymore no one cares

??? Wtf does this mean??? 80% of employers google you before hiring you, child predators use that info to groom kids, abusers use that info against victims, police/government track activists online? Do you honestly think the internet has gotten safer since 1998????

also don’t tell any rando who wanders onto your blog with unknown intentions the specifics of how they can trigger you???? no????

the fact that its not 1998 anymore is exactly WHY you should be more fucking careful. do you have any idea the tools people have now compared to then? the fact that its gotten exponentially easier to find people in real life based off online info while young people have gotten extremely comfortable sharing all their personal details is deeply concerning.

im sorry no one ever taught you internet safety but that is NOT because its not important anymore. ITS MORE IMPORTANT THAN IT EVER WAS. please listen to the people whove been on the internet longer than youve been alive. our intentions are good and internet safety is vital. especially if youre queer, which i know for a fact a lot of you are.

Listen, guys and gals and nonbinary pals. I know you’re going to think this is all overblown. But give me two minutes of your time.

My current roommate and I met on Tumblr. In the first three minutes I knew her I KNEW HER ADDRESS FROM HER ETSY. She only lived three miles down and one block over from me. Once we became friends, it took me literally fifteen minutes to drive to her house.

“Okay, but you guys are friends, roommates even, you love each other, what’s the problem?”

The problem is, this story doesn’t always have a happy ending.

The problem is, in another story I’m still 32, but she’s 15 instead of 43, and I’m an asshole.

The problem is, I am an adult. If a first meeting goes wrong, I have a car, a cell phone, and a tire iron in said car that I could defend myself with. What do you have?

The problem is, if you put identifying information out in the open, it could cross paths with someone who only lives 15 minutes away. And maybe they don’t care, and maybe they’re a chill person! That’s often the case.

But maybe they’re not.

“But I don’t put that kind of information—”

Listen. I’m gonna tell you I went to high school at General McLane and grew up by the cove. I’m going to mention that I HATED walking to my bus stop because it was out by the highway. At some point in our conversations, I mention that I’m walking down to the corner to get some ice cream.

Go onto Google and see how long it takes you to figure out, within a quarter-mile radius, where I grew up.

I can tell you how long it took me, using only the information I just provided you: two minutes. I looked up the school and got the address. That gave me the town name. I put that into Google Maps. I found Edinboro Lake and another body of water near it. Zoomed in on the streets near that second body of water, and boom. Cove Drive, right next to an ice cream shop, opening onto a highway.

You now have a radius of less than two blocks where I might have lived.

Do you feel a little less safe putting that information out there? You should. Because I didn’t use any special programs, any elite hacking knowledge. I used nothing but Google, the name of a high school, and two offhand conversational mentions, and in two minutes I’d narrowed it down to a single block. Go ahead—try it yourself.

And yes—I can do this for my roommate, too, even having never been to her hometown. All I need to know is the name of her town and a story about crossing the street and a neighbor’s yard to get to the Walmart.

Do not put this information out there, guys. 95% of people you will meet online are legit. Many are delightful.

But some are not. And those are the ones you need to watch for.

Side note, this just shocked me because I knew the name of that high school. I know where that high school is, and of all the thousands of high schools, you picked one I know about. How.

Which is a bonus reminder: You never know what useful, even critical information someone already knows that could also help them find you.

KEEP PERSONAL INFORMATION PERSONAL.

LEARN INTERNET SAFETY.

An excellent point. I don’t know this person, guys. I’ve never seen their name before. (Or if I have, I don’t remember it.)

But if I still lived in that house? I would have just handed them the metaphorical keys. (That’s why I picked a house I moved out of in 2004.) I assume they’re a cool person or they wouldn’t be screaming desperately with me about it. But what if they weren’t?

Let this be an object lesson.

I’ve reblogged this before, but–look, in 1998, we had MySpace, and webrings, and AIM, and those of us who had access to the internet at home at all generally had it on a big clunky desktop that lived in a public area of the house. 1998 was the year Google was founded. It was A LOT HARDER to track down personal information for other people in 1998, and Web 2.0 was in its infancy. Now we have platforms like Twitter, where one viral post can put you in front of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people. 

It’s not 1998 anymore–yeah, in 1998 when our parents were losing their minds about internet safety, we were a hell of a lot safer than teenagers are now.