Blogging it safe?

The Times Of India,19/07/2007 had an article on “Blogging safe” where they have mentioned some of the points,which bloggers can take care of while blogging.Some of the things are worth taking note of,while I would disagree on some of the tips given by them.However,this could be a useful resource to the guys new to the field of blogging.

Below is the complete article(had to copy-paste the complete article since,you need a IndiaTimes ID to access the page)

Blogs are like personal telephone calls crossed with newspapers. If you’ve blogged about something controversial, say a bad co-worker, chances are you’d want to keep things as anonymous as possible. Here then are some techniques that will help you be the Artful Dodger by which can endlessly rant against a faulty set up and not end up with an egg on your face.

Blog Carefully (Agree 50-50)
Use a pseudonym and don’t give away any identifying details. When you write about your workplace (a popular choice), be sure not to give away telling details. These include things like where you are located, how many employees there are, and the specific sort of business you do. Even general details can give away a lot. If, for example, you write, ‘I work at an unnamed TV news channel in Mumbai’ it’s probably now clear that you work in one of a few places. So be smart. Instead, you might say that you work in media. Keep it vague. Don’t post pictures of yourself. And don’t use pseudonyms that sound like the real names they are based on. And remember that almost any kind of personal information can give your identity away — you may be the only one at your workplace with a particular birthday, or with a certain pet. Also, if you are concerned about your colleagues finding out about your blog, do not blog while you are at work. Period. You could get in trouble for using company resources like an internet connection to maintain your blog, and it will be very hard for you to argue that the blog is a work related activity.

Use Anonymising Technologies(Agree 50-50)
There are a number of technical solutions for the blogger who wishes to remain anonymous. Invisiblog is a service that offers anonymous blog hosting for free. You may create a blog there with no real names attached. Even the people who run the service will not have access to your name. If you are worried that your blog hosting service may be logging your unique IP address and thus tracking what computer you’re blogging from, you can route your internet traffic through what’s called an ‘overlay network’ that hides your IP address. More importantly, this makes it difficult for snoops on the internet to follow the path your data takes and trace it back to you. Anonymizer offers a free downloaded ‘Anonymous Surfing,’ which routes your internet traffic through an anonymizing server and can hide your IP address from the services hosting your blog.

Use Ping Servers(Completely agree)
If you want to protect your privacy while getting news out quickly, try using ping servers to broadcast your blog entry for you. Pingomatic is a tool that allows you to do this. The program will send out notice (a ‘ping’) about your blog entry to several blog search engines. Once those sites list your entry, which is usually within a few min utes,you can take the entry down. Thus the news gets out rapidly and its source can evaporate within half an hour. This protects the speaker while also helping the blog entry reach people fast.

Limit Your Audience(Strongly disagree)
Many blogging services, allow you to designate individual posts or your entire blog as available only to those who have the password, or to people whom you’ve designated as friends.

Register Your Domain Name Anonymously (Agree 50-50)
Even if you don’t give your real name or personal information in your blog, people can look up the records for your domain name and find out who you are. If you don’t want anyone to do this, consider registering your domain name anonymously. The Online Policy Group (OPG) offers privacy protective domain name registration which could be used for the same.

Blog Without Getting Fired (Completely agree)
A handful of bloggers have recently discovered that their labours of love may lead to unemployment. By some estimates, dozens of people have been fired for blogging, and the numbers are growing every day. The bad news is that in many cases, there is no legal means of redress if you have been fired for blogging. While you have freedom of speech, it does not regulate what private parties (such as most employers) do.

Blog away!!! (Agree)
Blogs are getting a lot of attention these days. You can no longer safely assume that people in your offline life won’t find out about your blog, if you ever could. New RSS tools and services mean that it’s even easier than ever search and aggregate blog entries. As long as you blog anonymously and in a work-safe way, what you say online is far less likely to come back to hurt you.