Blogging Backlash

Internet Authors Learn The Price Of Telling Too Much

(AP) 
Caitlin Hoistion, a 15-year-old in Neptune, N.J., says she knows people who go as far as posting their cell phone numbers on their blogs - something she doesn't do. She also often shows her postings to her mom, which has helped her mom give her some space and privacy online.

"That's not to say if I thought something dangerous was going on, I wouldn't ever spy on her," says her mother, Melissa Hoistion. "But she has given me no need to do so."

Many college students say they're learning to take precautions on their own.

John Malloy, a 19-year-old student at Centre College in Danville, Ky., has put a "friends lock" on his LiveJournal site so only people with a password he supplies can view it.

"A lot of times, my blog is among the first places I turn when I am angry or frustrated, and I am often quite unfair in my assessment of my situation in these posts," Malloy says. "Do I wish I hadn't posted? Of course. But I haven't actually gone as far to take posts down."

Instead he makes them "private" so only he can read them.

"I like to keep them to look back on," he says.

Meanwhile, Joseph Milliron, a 23-year-old college student in California, says he's become more cautious about posting photos online because people sometimes "borrow" them for their own sites.

It's just one trend that's made Milliron rethink what he includes in his blog.

"I know thisis very conspiracy theorist - but I wouldn't put it past a clever criminal to warehouse different databases and wait 20 years when all the Internet youth's indiscretions can be used for surreptitious purposes," says the senior at California State
Polytechnic University, Pomona, who's been blogging for about three years.

Martin, the 23-year-old blogger in suburban Chicago, agrees that blogs can "provide just one more avenue for a person to embarrass him or herself."

"They also make it easier for people to tell everyone what a jerk you are," says Martin, who'll be heading to graduate school in Virginia this fall.

Still, she thinks blogging is worth it - to stay in touch with friends and to air her more creative work, including essays.

"I suppose in that way," she says, "I think of blogs as 'open mic nights' online."