Be Safe on the Internet

I have a couple of topics for this post.  One is regarding the privacy of your email address and the other is regarding telling people about vacations.

No good pictures for this topic, so I'll post some pictures of a quilt I just finished for my son to keep you reading.  I posted this quilt before when I made the top- but I just completed it and gave it to him.

Here's a picture of Paul holding up his quilt.  It's intended to be a throw- for TV watching and such.

This photo shows the backing folded over a block.  Paul has collected license plates since he was little.  I just couldn't resist making a quilt for him with this fabric.  The coordinating fabric used for the block backgrounds is a road map.

A few of the blocks....

 And Jaeger seems to want to pose with every quilt I try to photograph on the floor.  Maybe he just wants to try them out.  :-)








 OK-- that was the fun stuff.  Now the boring stuff with no pictures.... but PULEEZE keep reading....

Let's start with email and no-reply bloggers.  I have several email addresses.  One is very private.  My business email is plastered everywhere I can possibly plaster it.  I also have one for junk.  That's the one that I use for newsletters, when ordering online, for giveaways, etc.  Let's have a little chat about blogging and your email address.  I totally understand if you want to keep your email address off of blog replies.... especially if your email is the same as your work email or if you share it with your spouse or family.  Good grief- it's a scary world out there on the internet!  But you CAN play along on blogs and giveways and such things if you get a second email address.  Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail... and the list goes on and on... all have FREE email.  If you want to purchase online, enter contests, etc, but hold back because you want to maintain your privacy- consider getting an email address for these kinds of things.

Many of the contest entries I get- and just general comments on my posts are so kind and many ask for a reply.  If you are a no-reply blogger (ie, you have stated that you don't want your email to show in your preferences) then I have no way to reply to you!  It breaks my heart not to reply to some of you when I really, really want to respond!  I think that a lot of people select that they don't want their email to show thinking that it will be actually printed.  But what happens is that if I click on your name, I get "no-reply".

I TRY to reply to MOST of the comments made on my blog.  If it's a little one or 2 word comment, or if it's a request to enter a giveaway, I MIGHT not get to replying.  Sometimes I can get 150 comments overnight when I post a giveaway and it just isn't possible for me to send 150 emails right away.  Right now- I am behind.  But in general, if you post a comment I'll eventually reply to you privately in your email.  If you regularly post comments (to me or anyone else) and never ever get any personal replies- you're probably a no-reply blogger.  And chances are, many of you don't realize it.

Here's what you can do to find out.  It's a little different if you are on blogspot or typepad or others.  But you want to look for the words, privacy, or settings, or preferences.  On blogspot, it has a question in the preferences that says, "Show E-Mail Address".  Many people think, "Heck no--- don't show the world my email address!" and they leave that unclicked.  That makes you a no-reply blogger.  That's your choice.  Just know that others won't be able to interact with you.  If you click that you want the address to show, it won't end up on a bill board in Times Square.  It just means that people will be able to reply to you.  If this still bothers you, consider getting a separate email address.  I have good anti-virus software to weed out the really bad guys.  You really do need to invest in the antivirus stuff.  And even though I don't try terribly hard to protect my personal email address, I get very little spam.  Most of it ends up in my address that I use for online stuff like giveaways and online shopping.

If you get an email address for junk- just make sure you check it once in a while because there might be a note in there that you won a blog giveaway!!!  I check my junk email about once a week.

Note- just having a junk mail folder in your regular email box isn't the same thing.

Another note- please, please, please, PLEASE don't mark legitimate advertisements or newsletters as "junk or spam" unless they really are bad guys.  If you do that, the sender is marked as a spammer.  I used to think that the spam box on my email was just a separate folder for junk.  It's not.  Here's how this works:  I have a legitimate business and I send a newsletter to thousands of people about 10 times a year.  People are only on that list if they ASK to be.  (You can sign up for my newsletter on my website).  I pay a newsletter service to manage the list (it's BIG).  I pay for each address it goes to.  They send out my newsletter,  maintain the list, add and delete people as requested, etc.  If you don't want to read my newsletters right away, that's cool.  And if you don't want them any longer you can un-subscribe.  That's fine, too.  But if you mark my newsletter as SPAM, then I get a "black mark" against me with my service.  Too many of them and my service marks me as being "naughty".  It has other implications for me, too.  Well... it's more complicated than that, but you get the idea.  When you ask companies to send you their newsletter, they have to pay their services to send it to you... so don't call them spam.  Just unsubscribe or read them later or create a folder for newsletters in your email and put them there.  Okie dokie?

Second topic.  Or does this make 3 topics?  Vacations.  It just blows me away that people post of facebook and blogs that they are leaving town.  They say when they are leaving and when they are returning.  Why don't they just leave a key under the mat with a red arrow pointing to it?  And sometimes they say that there is a wedding or a funeral and they tell you the time and date.  Why don't they just go onto Craig's List and tell people that everyone who has any business in their house will be at a wedding on Saturday afternoon so some bad guy is free to come in and grab whatever they want that day?  "Hey, Mr. Bad Guy.... I'm going on vacation.  I'll be gone for 2 weeks.  That will give you plenty of time to rent a u-haul and back it up in my driveway and clean me out.  I'll leave the key under the mat for you."

One time, I actually read a blog post where a mom was telling her readers that she is now allowing her adolescent daughter to be home alone after school.  She told everyone that she gave the girl her own door key.  She didn't give her address, but it wouldn't be terribly hard to figure it out because she was pretty open about other things, too.  What was she thinking?!?!?!

OK- I know I'm being tacky here.  I'm really not trying to make fun of you if you've done any of these things (lots of people do).  But honestly- be careful!  Post about your vacation when you return.  And the people who read your tweets and FB updates will enjoy them just as much if you tell them about it after you return.  I really like you guys and I would hate to read on your blog that you were robbed while on vacation.

SO guess what!?!?!?  We JUST got BACK from vacation!  I'll tell you all about it tomorrow. :-)

Thanks for making it to the end of  along and boring post.  Can you tell that I'm passionate about these topics (especially posting about vacations!)?   I promise a fun post tomorrow.