ClueChick: real clues from a real chick

Nothing.

This came up in an email exchange with a reader, who requested that I respect his privacy and not share the (gorgeous, by the way) photo he sent me, or his email address, etc. Because I haven't said this here before, this is a good time for me to talk about privacy, the internet, you and me.

I will never post anything personal or private you send me without your explicit permission. That is, if you send me a photograph, a draft of an email or an ad, poetry, or a scan of last night's dinner receipt, I will not post it here or on any other web site. I will never share your email address in any forum unless you give me the OK.

That said, I may use questions people ask or topics that come up in private correspondence as a jumping-off point for a post here. I will not name names when I do so, and you may choose to identify yourself in comments, or not -- either way is fine. When I do this, I will not quote you without your permission.

If you send me a link to a really cool web site or other resource that I think will be useful or entertaining to my readers, I will almost certainly want to share it. In these cases, as long as the resource is publicly available, and any reasonable person could find it through a google search, I will probably go ahead and post it. This does not, obviously, include links to personal web pages and the like.

What you see me posting here does include real ads posted by men on various dating sites. As these are publicly posted, I think of them as fair game. Even so, I'll never post someone's email address (even one of the temporary CL addresses) without the individual's permission. I also sometimes post responses I've gotten to my ads or profiles on various sites. That is, responses to me as a private citizen, rather than as the internet personality, may well be featured here. You can avoid this by writing good emails in response to ads. In these cases, I always strip identifying information, and I always will.