Blog Request

You may have noticed that the blog has been password protected for the last couple of days. This week we discovered some unusual activity on the blog and until we could determine who it was we took it down. We’ve tried to be very cautious about knowing who has been on the blog for a couple of reasons. Primarily, the decision for us to start a blog was contingent on safety issues. We’ve read several articles that have talked about the incredible amounts of information that parents unknowingly provide the world about their children on blogs (first and last names, location, etc). Just like names on backpacks, all of this can become very dangerous when in the wrong hands. This is why we don’t use real names, even our own, on the blog.

On a more personal level, I have students, colleagues, and potential employers who use search engines to find my teaching webpages and other professional documents, and while many of these people know that I’m pregnant, I don’t want nursery decor and ultrasound pictures to trump my cv and contact info in Google.

To help us monitor who is looking at the blog and how they get here, we have tracking software. Basically this is is just a readout of where blog readers come from. While mostly this software keeps track of which entries are the most popular and similar information, it also alerts us to potential concerns. When we noticed that we had readers that we didn’t recognize and that they found us through an email sent via yahoo (a mail service that doesn’t require verification of the user), we password protected the blog until we could figure out what was going on.

Here’s what you can do to help us maintain an open blog that is also private:

• We love comments and have even enabled anonymous comments. If you leave a comment please don’t use our first or last names (or eventually the baby’s) OR sign your comment with your real name. Chances are we can figure out who your are by your comment or you can employ our technique and use initials.
• Please don’t send the blog address to other people or put a link to it on your website without asking. I’m sure that we’ve missed people who would have a legitimate reason for wanting to read the blog, but letting us know before you link or share the blog helps us distinguish between welcome and unwelcome visitors. Send me an email and I’ll invite them.

I know these sound like very picky requests, but the problem with the internet is that nothing is ever really deleted. Google has gotten so sophisticated that even one or two comments or links elsewhere can end up in a search engine to stay. If everyone will help us out with the above items, we would really appreciate it. Thanks!