4givrnt4gtr Posted August 21, 2007 Posted August 21, 2007 I posted in a forum with a user name that my bf knows...i didnt realize it until now and there's nothing i can do if he decides to search my sn.... So in order to do as much damage control as possible in case he does, i told him i post on a forum regarding relationships, that, since i dont discuss relationships with my live friends, i use the posting to deal with a past relationship that went bad and ever since ive kept using it... He asked me about the relationship and if i had gotten hurt by it....i decided to come clean. If he search the sn he will know how badly hurt i still am to this day, not just bc of that relationship, but mostly bc of the one before it. So i told him about it, with little detail as he allowed, and that it helped me grow and learned a lot from it, despite the pain that it caused. I really didnt want to go into the whole past exs with him, as ive learned that it usually does more bad than good (who wants someone with baggage!), but i felt i had no choice, i rather he know from me, and if he runs into the site at least he wont be surprised. That and that he would understand that the posts relating to him and my insecurity come not from him but from my past..... Am i right about this??? or did i do more damage than if i had just left it alone?
Author 4givrnt4gtr Posted August 21, 2007 Author Posted August 21, 2007 Seriously people, beware of what you post and your anonymity when you do....reading all my old posts, theres absolutely nothing i can do to fix the damage that all this will cause in my relationship if he does find it.... Bassically if he finds it, despite our chat about it, i know the relationship will be over....I know im gonna hate myself for it for a long time if it happens, and as you well know there's absolutely nothing i can do (i still dont understand why we cant change sns when necessary, other sites allow it). Bassically, im completely screwed.... I came here looking for help, and it actually was the worst mistake i could have ever made..... Be very careful....
Trimmer Posted August 21, 2007 Posted August 21, 2007 I agree with your warnings. I've said this in the past, and this situation seems to crop up periodically. Every few months someone posts an "oh my god, someone found out who I am on here; what happened to my privacy" type of post. These forums are not private, they are anonymous. And they are only anonymous to the degree that you protect that anonymity, both in your postings on here, and in interactions with people in your real life. We each technically compromise our privacy the moment we post anything on this forum - this is inherently a public forum. Go do a google search on <Trimmer cheat wife> or <Trimmer wife divorce> or <Trimmer marry divorce> and in every case, you'll find links to my own Loveshack postings within the first 4 or 5 results returned by Google. My whole story is there for the reading, if you know where to look. The layers of insulation that I have are: (1) no-one would ever associate the screen name "Trimmer" with any real life version of me, (2) I've never told anyone that I post my relationship issues on here, or on the internet in general, and (3) although I've posted a lot of information about my life, I've scrupulously avoided posting enough detail about myself for anyone to definitively narrow it all down and put the whole picture together from an "outside in" search. The closest I talk about where I live is to say "small town." I don't get specific about what my job is, etc... I don't think that anyone who knows me in real life - even my XW - could do even a pretty smart web search, and narrow me down to "Trimmer on Loveshack." Now, on the other hand, even with all that caution, from an "inside out" perspective, I have no doubt that I could pick 8 or 10 of my postings, and if you put those in front of my XW, she could pretty much be sure - based on our common experiences - that they were written by me. Or if you told her to get on loveshack and look at "Trimmer's" postings, she would pretty quickly narrow it down. So really, my insulation is that (a) she doesn't know to look, (b) she probably doesn't care to look, and © if she did look - via web searching - most of the terminology I use to post is generic enough that a search would never narrow down usefully to me. So I think it's important to realize that posting on here is a risk management exercise. For example, theoretically, it's not impossible that before we separated, she might have seen "Loveshack.com" in the browser history on our computer, or through some other means where I had been incautious for a moment. If so, and she's interested in finding me, just that one piece of information would get her 90% of the way to finding my posts. I could imagine she might look for threads started around a particular time in our separation process, and she might stumble across one where I ask about telling kids about divorce; between the timing of the thread and other details posted there (ages, their reactions, etc), I think she would believe that it pretty much narrows it down to me. In your case, using a known and somewhat unique screen name could have the same effect. Know that it's a risk we take, based on the layers of insulation we may or may not provide ourselves, but understand the possibility of discovery is still there. So be careful in thinking that posting on Loveshack is private - there's a big difference between that and maintaining anonymity. And the reason I'm so vocal about it is that some of us here have a lot at stake, emotionally and otherwise, as it sounds like you do.
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