Anonymity

Gee I hope Google bar's spell check worked

[camweh]

I'm trying to help a friend who has a background which is "nationally interesting" history-wise to our country. If he starts a blog relating to his knowledge of past events how will he be able to maintain his anonymity?

Government and national security are not the issue. He's worried about the media annoying his family because his proposed blog may spark great interest within our geographical area and I'm sure it will.

The reason why I'm posting here is that he wishes to add adsense to the blog to perhaps add to his funds in retirement. The question is "will he be traceable through his registration details on his adsense coding"?

[salvisa]

I don't think Adsense reg details are necessarily the weakest link in that chain.

He'll have the same issues w/ domain registration, web hosting, blog service provider, stats/analytics providers, etc. Anyone who has his personal info on file.

Also, if his blog allows comments to have hyperlinks, someone could provide a link to something obscure that only the blogger would be interested in and thus get his IP address. If it's a static IP, there's some reverse lookup stuff that can be done to find out the ISP. And ISPs are notorious for giving out details... even without a court order.

Also, unscrupulous people have been known to use lawsuits simply for the discovery privileges it grants them. If what this person is revealing is THAT important, then that's a possible risk.

Obviously I don't know the details, but my observation of the media is that if you deliberately try to hide something, they become pitbulls and tenaciously hold on until they uncover what you're trying to hide. (And then make a bigger deal out of it than if you'd been upfront from the beginning.)

[Andrew Bassett]

AFAIK AdSense publisher info is confidential between the publisher and Google.

But if he registered a domain name for the site, it would take a five-second WHOIS query to get his name and address.

[jomaxx]

You can also have your registrar keep your info private, but this service usually costs a premium. And you can do the whole thing through some kind of corporate entity. But as others have said, if the mystery becomes that interesting then someone will probably figure it out and talk.

This doesn't seem like the best strategy anyways. Granted the media are not fun to deal with, but how can you write with any authority without revealing why anyone should believe you or care? And presumably the blogger's strongest asset will be direct, specific knowledge of the events he is writing about, but how can he leverage that if he is unable to let slip anything that will reveal his identity?

[jomaxx]

P.S. Just noticed you're dialing in from Scotland. Suddenly I have this vision of your friend being a footman for Prince Charles at Balmoral, or a roommate of Prince William, or something stupid like that. If that's the case then you're in luck, because people eat that stuff up whether it's true or not.

[netmeg]

If he's really that concerned about privacy, then convince or pay a friend to put the whole shmear (and do the posting) under HIS name. No reason the AdSense account can't be under the actual blogger's name; that information shouldn't be easily publically available.

That said - anything you really really really truly wish to keep private should always be kept as far away from the largest network in the world as possible.

(i.e. if it's that big a concern, he shouldn't do it)