Beware of your email!

I've always been honest with what I post, & am certainly not ashamed of what I do. I accept some people may think me, maybe, a 'bit strange', or is that my inferiority complex kicking in again? But I'm not here to dissect myself. More to warn you about the dangers of the internet, and how things can be used maliciously against you.

A bit of background, and I won't use actual names in case it's googled! There's a football club who I wound up when we played them by wearing a scarf of another club who they hate. Red rag to a bull, and yes, very childish & provocative. What I didn't expect was the backlash from some of their fans on their messageboards. I am a well known, high profile fan from my club, so I am well known. So they called me all sorts on their boards. Fine. I can cope with that. What I was not expecting was photos of both myself & my brother to be posted on there. Plus my street address, from my name in letters pages of my local paper, on line. They googled me everywhere, and included my brother's work details. And they also googled my email address, which they got from one of my footballing blogs. This linked to an adult gay website, where I had a very personal, intimate profile on; including full frontal snaps. I'm not embarrassed by them, it's a way I get sexual no strings meet ups now & again. But...this was traced through my email, which came up when they googled my email address! To see my profile, which they posted on their messageboards, they had to sign up to that site! As a result I got even more personal/homphobic abuse & I had to quickly pull the profile & leave the site. It was geting way too personal & I'd be lying if I didn't say I wasn't shaken up by all the 'attention' from them. Thankfully they are in a far higher division than us, this was a local cup game we played them in, & I'm hoping the 'fuss' will die down as they get bored. But sure to flare up if ever we play them again in future seasons. But I took the precaution of deleting my old blog, as it had a HUGE amount of personal information that they would twist against me once they found it. And I wasn't prepared to take that risk.

If you add your email to various things on-line then google it! Like me, you may be surprised by how easily we can all be traced on the internet.

Hence a new email, & a pretend name for me, totally different to my previous blogging monikers on here.

Which is a shame, as I really did like my old one!

But time to move on. As the title says...'Keep smiling through...'

And don't worry, the one person who's popped round a few times for some some fun from that site, well I emailed him to explain I was deleting my profile, & we still meet up occasionally. In fact you'll be pleased to know he was round earlier this evening.... :-)