Recently I signed up for a social networking thing but was in a rush and checked the box that allowed the site to trawl my email and add contacts automatically. If I thought about it at all, I was dimly pleased that I wouldn’t have to laboriously go through and find all of my friends.
A week or so later I received a message that read in part: I know you because you are a famous writer. How do you know me? Because you’ve sent me several rejection letters!
Yikes! We’ll set aside the putative issue of fame (yeah, right – I’m recognized in grocery stores around the world- whatever) for the moment and focus on the utter stupidity of giving a social networking site permission to snoop through my email.
What delights might the bot have found? Hundreds, possibly thousands, of email addresses of real-life friends, ex friends, abandoned acquaintances, ex-husbands and their assorted ex-wives and onward through the range of ex-in-laws, all of the cousins who are literate enough to have email, countless peripheral professional contacts, legions of magazine fans and subscribers and contributors, and every single person who has ever sent hate mail or a death threat.
Now remember – this internet thing has been my day job for over a decade. I’m painfully aware of the security risks of community organizing on the web. I’ve even been served with FBI subpoenas for server records, for goodness sake!
I really, honestly, truly knew better than to check that permission box.
I lead a very public life, but it isn’t necessary to do the internet equivalent of walking into a hometown bar and shouting Hey! Anyone heard from my stalker lately? I’d love to get back in touch!
In fact, I’m much more likely to do that (high school reunion, anyone? I can’t wait) than allow myself to be virtually connected with certain people from my past. I suppose I’m allowed to make stupid careless mistakes sometimes, though this might be edging over the quota for the year – and it is still only July.