How the web has changed (I)
I keep archive copies of my personal website going back to 2007. Looking back over my 2007 site recently, I was struck by how much personal information I gave away. Not only did I include my personal address and telephone number, but also the names of my wife and kids, along with photos.
When I used web forums, I used my full, real name, as I think most people did at that time. I had nothing to hide, after all. I never wrote on a forum something I wouldn't have been willing to shout from the rooftops. I guess if you were posting on a forum dedicated to a subject that might attract a level of disapprobation -- non-mainstream gender issues, perhaps -- you'd probably have been more reticent. Still, identifiability seemed to have been the rule, rather than the exception. At that time, I found it hard to take anybody seriously who didn't use what appeared to be a real name. Some forums even insisted on it.
It seems very unlikely that anybody these days would think this kind of exposure reasonable or sensible. In large web forums and on social media, almost everybody is pseudonymous. Even people who use their real identifies online for business purposes often have a pseudonym for more personal matters.
With hindsight, I wonder whether it was sensible to be so liberal with our personal information even twenty years ago. At the time, it never even occurred to me to ask. After all, until quite recently, names and addresses in the UK -- at least of adults -- were a matter of public record. Once we registered to vote in elections, we were listed on the Electoral Roll, which anybody could see. If you knew my name, and approximately where I lived, you could find my exact address. You could find my telephone number in the telephone directory. There were legitimate ways to find out about my family, my employment status, and perhaps even the car I drove. The administrative processes were a bit fiddly, but anybody could do it.
So, back in 2007, I wasn't giving anything away on the web that couldn't have been found using other means -- the website just made it easier.
I think it was around 2010 when I started to hear widespread talk of how it might be unsafe to publish too much personal information on websites and forums. Our society's general view of privacy started to change, I think, at about the same time.
These days, we can opt out of the public version of the Electoral Roll, leaving our details only accessible to certain officials (what could possibly go wrong...?) State agencies are a bit less willing to dole out personal information to strangers. We can, in principle, take legal action against businesses that don't respect our privacy. Being a bit circumspect in our online life matches our increased circumspection in real life.
I'm not sure what's changed, other than our attitudes. When people warned me, fifteen years ago, that using my real-life identity online might be unsafe, they were never able to explain to my satisfaction why that might be the case. And that remains true: out of courtesy I don't disclose details of my friends or families on my website or on forums, but I doubt they would be harmed if I did. I just don't think it's my place to give out that kind of information.
One area of online life where the trend towards anonymity seems to be resisted is those personal websites that adopt "IndieWeb" principles. Of the sites listed in the IndieWeb web ring at `xn--sr8hvo.ws` I'd estimate that about half of them are completely open about the site owner's real-life identify, and contain some amount of real-life personal information. Some even contain photos of family members.
These days I generally use a pseudonym when posting online in a personal, rather than business, capacity. But it's not at all difficult to map my pseudonym to my main website, which is completely transparent about who I am, what I do, and where I live. My Gemini capsule, for example, has a link on every page to my main website.
I rather miss the days when we -- most of us -- were completely happy using our real-world identities online. At the same time, I accept that privacy is a right that is ours to exercise or not, as we wish. The rise in tracking technologies now means that our privacy is less assured than it was twenty years ago, for all our attempts to remain anonymous online.
Published 2026-02-26, updated 2026-02-26
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gemlogConverted from my Gemini capsule.