Tony Yarusso's Blog

Okay, so it seems that some people are unaware of the nature of posting things on the internet, so we're just going to have a quick rundown.  The internet IS public.  There are ways to restrict access to material, but if you do not explicitly employ them, the material you post is viewable to everyone, whether you think they are looking for it or not.  If you think you can hide online, you're deceiving yourself, and it will come back to haunt you.  Follow tech news for a month and you'll see an article about personal web sites, MySpace, blogs, chatrooms, forums, and message boards being read by parents, teachers, school administrators, the police, scholarship review boards, and employers.  Google finds everything not explicitly excluded by a robots.txt file on the server.  Humans can find anything that they can find with Google or by clicking an infinite number of hyperlinks to arrive at it from something else.  So, you all should be aware of a few things.  First, Xanga sites are all indexed by Google and you do not have server access to modify the robots exclusion file.  Second, blogrings are indexed too.  Third, anybody with you in their subscriptions list is a link to your site, and anybody who reads their site can read yours.  So if you have any reason to be concerned, at least use protected posting, and don't complain later if you didn't.  Just to give some idea, here is a list just of the people I know of for sure who read or have read my Xanga:

Hill-Murray People:
Mandy
Theresa
Kelly Barbato
Stephanie
Helen
Amy
Mary
Stacie
Cassie
Ally
Mike
Andrew
Alicia
K
Kelsey
Erik
Heather
Megan
Laura
Matt
Andrew
A.J.
Steve
Teresa
Leah
Christine
Melissa
Laura
Rachael
Rebecca
Jenni
Elise
Lauren
Rose

Family:
Barb
Becky
Dave
Sandy

Any of the people (listed by nick) who frequent #ubuntu-offtopic on Freenode:
CuriousCat
Madpilot
robotgeek
nalioth
Razor-X
me2win
elkbunty
Seveas
purplefeltangel
topyli
and others.

People I don't know:
Jo - Minneapolis, Minnesota
Ken - Minneapolis, Minnesota
Unidentified English major - Minnesota
Unidentified employee - State of Minnesota
Nicole - Peterborough, Ontario
Jenifer - Peterborough, Ontario
Tammara - Peterborough, Canada
Katherine Watson - Peterborough, Canada
Unnamed resident - Toronto, Ontario
Grace - Canada
Jen - some anorexic girl
Unidentified student - University of Chicago
Shana - Fargo, North Dakota
Allison - Oakland, California
Kate - St. Louis, Missouri
Melanie - Lancaster, Ohio
Jennifer - Scranton, Pennsylvania
Liz - Kutztown University, Pennsylvania
Unidentified student - Whitman College, Washington
Allison - Birmingham, Alabama
Ava - Waco, Texas
Unidentified resident - Chile
Verena - Germany

And anybody else that can use Google.