Research of a Medical Librarian

While searching librarians’ blogs on privacy issues, I came across this blog that’s about a year old at the Shifted Librarian’s site. The more I look at the Web 2.0 social networking tools, the more I think about privacy issues.

She talks about the different perceptions between the generations for privacy on the net and in life in general. I’m part of that older generation that still wants privacy. More than once I’ve been upset when I found personal information at unexpected places. I like to think my personal blog is anonymous enough to keep from being directly connected to me unless I tell someone who I am. Imagine how unhappy I was to discover how easy it is to discover who owns domains.

Privacy on the Web is pretty much an illusion, at least at my level of expertise. I’m not the paranoid person who either doesn’t use the net or electronic signature at all (my fiction kicks in - see The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks) or who encrypts everything I do about 20 different ways.

Instead I maintain the (illusory?) hope that I’m not interesting enough for people to investigate.