I have met a good many Mechazens offline.

I have no qualms about sharing my name and address here, because I have known folks on this site, and in MeFi, for up to 10 years.

And, with facebook and twitter, most of us are on one or both of those, and real names, more personal info, seems to be the way online stuff is headed. It seems the exception, rather than the rule, for someone to maintain anonymity around here.

So I dunno. Maybe rainbaby and boringpostcards will kill me in my bed next week, but prolly not.

It would take approximately 10 seconds for any even slightly competent private detective or government official to find out my actual name and address. For a private citizen of the US or any other country, it might take as much as 30 seconds. Names and addresses aren't privileged information and they never have been. Why, when I was a younger woman, they were even published in thick books that were given out to everyone for free: the telephone book.

In other words, there are privacy issues to worry about, like credit card numbers, and there are privacy issues that you can't worry about unless you want to go screamingly insane, like your address. I've been giving my address out online for well over a decade now. I've invited total strangers from the internet to come and visit me multiple times and it's always been great. Some of the people I've met on Mecha & Mefi are among my closest real life friends now; I see them regularly.

Also, I've never understood what people think is so dangerous about others knowing their names and addresses. Really, it's public information, freely available at any library or town hall. You need a lot more than a name and an address for identity fraud. Seriously, the worst that's going to happen is a sex toy catalog arriving and that isn't even all that likely unless the people you're hanging around with online are 12.

You know who is dangerous in my life and who I worry about? My ex husband, who has recently gone even further around the bend than he used to be. That is scary. People online are not. Just as kids are overwhelmingly molested or abducted by their relatives and family friends and not by strangers, so it is with adults. The people you know are pretty much always much more dangerous than strangers.

Having now said so, if I get a reindeer poop catalog in the mail, I know where to point fingers.

I am interested in this catalog. My social security number is 987-65-4321.

I tend to think of the MeCha/MeFi communities as being safer and a cut above than your average forum, but a walk through MetaTalk archives made me feel like I was way off base with that.

Huh. What made you feel that way? Metatalk can get rough but I'd still say it's better than 99% of forums out there. And Mecha is even better.

I think I'm more comfortable Mefi/Mecha people having my address than I am with Amazon or Paypal having it.

I doubledogdare you to come find me!

I'd like more metachat people to come find me. I have a spare room! I live in NYC!

But yeah, what mygothlaundry said. Especially about the phone books.

Also, I've never understood what people think is so dangerous about others knowing their names and addresses. Really, it's public information, freely available at any library or town hall. You need a lot more than a name and an address for identity fraud.

Yeah, that. I suppose in theory someone could come to my house and try to kill me using card exchange data, but if they wanted to do that, they could look me up online and find my address other ways, too. And like others said above, I've met a lot of the people in the card exchange in "real life" already.

For some, I'm sure the answer is going to be that you do all MeCha/Fi business through a work address or P.O. Box = FWIW, I don't think anyone did that this year. Maybe one or two people have over the past years I have run the Mecha card swap.

There are so many places on the Web now that harvest and post public records data.

I was reading a blog post this week by a public librarian in my state, and he mentioned that his library keeps a "List of Residents" that anyone can come and consult .. at this time of year, a lot of people use it to find their friends' addresses to send Christmas cards. Aside from the obvious Why don't you just *ask* your friends for their addresses?, I find this disturbing for a reason I can't really articulate. After all, as mygothlaundry pointed out above, you can get an address from the telephone book.

I have a PO box but I've also had my phone number on the internet and findable by googling my fairly distinct name since ... 1997? No one calls me. I get maybe one weird phone call every other year and it's usually just someone (various people who share this one characteristic) who sounds like they may be developmentally disabled asking me a question because they know I am a librarian. I believe on a personal level that people's fears of strangers are dramatically overblown and the fact that occasionally something bad happens to someone because of a stranger does not change my mind about that fact. As much as I hope I am not murdered in my home, I don't think the likelihood of that happening increases at all if I give my address to thirty people I sort-of know. And, to be macabre about it, I'd rather be dead and (generally) trusting than living a life of constant paranoia and fear of the unknown.

Because I use my husband's last name, not the surname I am known by.

I don't disagree with you about some of the denizens of MeTa. There are some very unhappy people who frequent there.

A quick check says I've met half the people in this thread IRL already, and one's stayed in my daughter's room, so I kind of figure I have nothing to lose at this point. Maybe some of it is being tall and fearless, but I've been out there on the web a long time, meeting folks IRL for 15 years or more. I've just never much worried about it, and, like jessamyn, I find it opens me up to a lot of fun stuff.

My house has an alarm and I collect knives.

mullacc: There are accounts from users, found by searching for "address" on the MetaTalk archives, who have been signed up for white supremacist mailing lists or forums pertaining to embarrassing personal medical issues by others, particularly after contentious exchanges on the blue.

gaspode: Be careful. I could see myself taking you up on that (after a formal written proposal and mutual vetting of course).

I realize that getting to know/interacting with people is a process that also contains some risk. I myself do not like strangers, but still want to make friends/date/etc., and so I am constantly dealing with it in addition to family not understanding how this is negotiated even more than me.

I can't even get any of you to come THROUGH my town in order to stop and visit. . .*sniff*

I've been around Metachat for quite some time now and I can tell you without doubt, these are the good guys, right here.

Uber smart, extremely attractive, well hung, and no strangers to the rarefied things in life, I would trust them with my personal information without hesitation.

Also, bunnies.

I've met a few Mecha/Mefi people (no one in this thread). Heck. I met my husband on the internet! Note: He's still not an ax murderer. It's never occurred to me to be worried about sharing my name & address with this bunch of people. My Mefi profile even has me asking to be stalked. Seriously, there's always a first time for something to happen, but even so, I've had my address out there a few times now without any issues.

As I am but a AI created by dodgygeezer I have nothing to fear from any of you IRL.

≡ Click to see image ≡

I was in a new city, I knew more people here than in ?real life? ( and yeah, 90% of my 'net' friends seem to be a bit brighter and more faithful than the 'real life' folks' ) and I figured; 'hey, why not do some cards'. Long story short; I got sent somewhere and in the flurry of the five months somewhere else for job; I did not return a single thank you. Shame, shame, eternal shame.

But when the first few hit and I had to leave for out of state temporary work in the next few days; it sure did help me to leave with a bit more mental hugs.

So. Via work; I think four locations in the two years since then. Go figure so many people choose to have under bridge / sabbatical woods camping as addresses.

Very late thanks for the cards; if anybody wants current addy, postage refunded, or ??? I have a functioning email here.

The country I live in does not really exist.
So sharing my address does no harm.

I've had a number of MeFites sleep over. Some have even woken up in the morning.

My neighborhood is a bit dangerous so anyone coming after me would feel safer going after someone else.

This is just that thing where people tend to overestimate the level of risk.

I tend to agree with jessamyn. People have always been able to find out others' addresses. Not only because it's public municipal record, but because people have always made their addresses available to strangers. I mean, were your parents ever in the phone book? On a round robin or chain letter list? Listed in a church or school directory, or on a club address list? Did they subscribe to magazines? Ever leave a job and post their address on an index card on the bulletin board for people to keep in touch? I can remember life before email, and my family and I did all those things. All those things meant that our address was sitting around somewhere where strangers could find it.

This is really no different. It's a shared community which we have a reasonable degree of confidence is just about as safe for us as absolutely any other informal institution in life.

MetaChatters are, on the whole, really good people. Some of my good personal IRL-friends are people I originally met through this place! Sure, there is to some degree a halo effect that says "if they're on my friendly website, they're AOK." I wouldn't push that beyond a reasonable level. I mean, be sensible about interacting. People come in all flavors. But we're talking about sending cards.

I also gotta think that if you're crazy, and you want to pick a random person and be a threat to them, waiting for the holidays and signing up for the exchange is really not the low hanging fruit way to do it. If you're that far gone, you are not rational. It hardly would matter how a person latched onto a target - it's such a random and irrational thing that it could be any way at all. When it happens, and it's really rare anyway, it's not usually like they pretended to be a nice fine person until they got that Christmas card list and then ATTACK. It's usually something that presses far fewer overt/poorly estimated "risk!" buttons and makes far less sense, as a way of choosing a victim, to an outside observer.

I've been giving my address out all over the place, well, forever. As plenty have already said, this information has been routinely published in the public domain for decades now. In any case, if I was to be worried about someone knocking on my door with dastardly intentions, the least of my concerns would be a bunch of people that mostly live half a world away. I don't think I'm either attractive nor offensive enough for anyone to have strong enough feelings about me either way.

I wouldn't post my real name and address and phone number right here in a comment right now.

For the card exchange, I send it to one person, TPS, and she sends it to about ten people. Other times, like meeting up, or Secret Quonsar, it's even less people in the equation. It does feel a little funny, but degree of risk is teeny tiny and the rewards are great.

Now I'm in the mood for another bunnystock.

There are accounts from users, found by searching for "address" on the MetaTalk archives, who have been signed up for white supremacist mailing lists or forums pertaining to embarrassing personal medical issues by others, particularly after contentious exchanges on the blue.

With respect, almost all of those situations were just people being jerks with email addresses in the first place and we have no independent confirmation of any of those things being the direct result of MetaFilter. Not saying it's at all cool and not saying we don't have some users who have harassed other users (we get the reports and have to figure out what to do) but it's a different situation on a much larger site. And we're talking about a thing that has happened a handful of times in the 13 year history of the site. Everyone has to draw their risk tolerance lines where they feel comfortable of course, but for people who are only sort of anonymous in the first place, I don't see an emailed list of addresses really putting personal information out there much more than having an email address in one's profile. For people who require total anonymity for whatever reason, not being involved in the card exchange seems like the way to go.