Are we secure??

This last week, my class was given an assignment to choose an individual to research on the web and see just how much information we could find on them.  Being a typical female, I sought out information about a guy I had previously dated, and found a lot of offensive information, which makes me that much more happy that I am not in contact with him anymore. :)  But this got me thinking, if I can find this information on an ex, I could probably find it on just about anyone.

So, to relate this to my blog topic, I started researching people I had met, and become very close to in my residential treatment facility.  I was not surprised to find out just how amazing these woman are.  One of my closest friends had written a book, and was onto her second one.  Another, was in Occupational Therapy school at one of the highest ranking schools on the east coast.  One had played violin in the New York Orchestra.  I even researched my therapist, and found out where she went to school, and that she graduated with honors!  When I met all these woman, I knew that they were great people, and had many things going for them despite the bump in the road we were all going through together.  But I had no idea just how brilliant they all were.  It was told to me once, that some of the smartest most talented woman have eating disorders, and after doing my research this definitely holds true.  

When I went to research these ladies, I first looked for information on the site that was hosted by our treatment facility.  Luckily, there was no information to be found.  This site, and the program we went through was absolutely inaccessible when it came to finding any type of information about patients.  I called recently to ask how I would go about getting information released on myself.  I found that even to do THAT it would be a process, which turned out to be virtually impossible to be done over the web.  This makes me feel much more secure that this precious information is in the right hands and cannot be accessed by anyone who I have not given direct permission to.  

I’m sure there are many sites on eating disorders that are not as secure with their information as the one that I started with, but that is why one must be careful.  Blog sites, and any sites where one can interact with one another makes it very easy to access information about the person you are talking to, so I was always sure to only share basic information, and not go too in depth with the person I was communicating with.  This is good advice with any networking websites, too much information about yourself could be harmful, and easily accessible.

--Jessicca :)