This guy I know

[thebitterguy]

My friend Gabe runs a blog, Salted Lithium (a 2008 nominee for Best Canadian Health Blog) where he, among other things, is detailing his current status in treating his Manic Depression. During his working days he worked as a journalist and PR dude, and he always has had a huge interest in internet privacy and related topics.

Recently a friend of his got into a little disagreement over the appropriateness of a Twitter post about getting her kids to bed. Someone decided that it was a legitimate death threat, so things got way out of hand and the police eventually got called.

Recently he another post about protecting your privacy online and keeping blog posts, etc from being tracked back to you.

He's very immersed in this sort of thing, so I bid you go read. Go!

Comments

[sushisweetie.livejournal.com]

If someone made a threat against their child or another child, and I thought the situation was honestly dangerous, I would not hesitate to contact authorities. But it would have to be something non-sarcastic not like "I am going to kill these kids if they don't shut up" more like "my child didn't shut up so I slapped them around", ya know something real.

I don't know if I would have considered that post an honest threat had I seen it. I don't know her. If I knew her (in that internet way of knowing someone) and she had made posts about being stressed out, or something that scream "OHMIGOD I AM GOING TO SNAP!" then maybe possibly.

I have contacted authorities twice in my life over something to do with kids, but both things were real life, non-internet things.

[brand-of-amber.livejournal.com]

What an excellent page.

Of course, as I'm reading it I'm thinking back on PI classes and being like "oh, yea, I'd forgotten that, now I remember how to track people down again, thanks for letting me know!"

Heh.

Its no accident that the same people get hired to find and keep people from getting found.

[brand-of-amber.livejournal.com]

I now want to randomly tweet about all the people I`m going to kill, see how long it takes the police to show up.

cray-zeee

[saltedlithium.livejournal.com]

I knew you had powers dude, but damn. I've tried to get the people who read my little blog to do stuff in the past... but if I met them on the street and told them their leg was on fire they'd say "you articulated that really well, and I love the photo."

I think I had an extra fifty visitors from LiveJournal... do you guys call them "blogs"? thanks to your post.

Actually... two days after I wrote the post you're sending people to my "unique visitors" and blog hits had dropped by almost 60%. I believe that was the messenger getting shot.

Thanks for the post, I really like the words you used.

Re: cray-zeee

[thebitterguy]

I think the technical term is blogs, yes.

Hey, if I can send anyone your way, I'm happy to. When do you want to get together next week? Any night other than Thursday is good for me.

[thebitterguy]

I've been doing it for months. Not a peep.

[thebitterguy]

Yeah, it's all about context. And there's lots of better ways to handle it than going to the police in such a clumsy fashion.

[sushisweetie.livejournal.com]

what would you suggest?

[thebitterguy]

Oh, goodness, I have no idea. I've never encountered a situation where the person obviously meant to do themselves or another person harm, and I've got not training in handling it.

I guess I meant more that it seems to be an over-reaction, considering the situation. One that seeme to escalate far past what it needed.