Fandom Security

[icarus]

I helped a college student from a religious family set up her "security" to keep her parents out of her slash (and before you ask, no, she had no interest in abandoning her religion, she just felt her interest in slash fanfiction was irrelevant). She had other people's advice but here were a few of my suggestions:

1. Consider computer crashes! An external drive is your friend. Stick a pile of books on top of it; the UBC cord only takes a moment to yank.


2. If you're in Windows, set up two administrative passwords, then "hide" folders under your password. When you have computer problems you give them the other administrative password. If you do this correctly, the folders will not appear for those logged in under the other password.


3. File names: there's nothing less interesting than a string of numbers for a filename. Labelling it PORN attracts attention.


4. If you receive zines, get a Mail Boxes Etc.-type box. Pick a branch that gives you after hours access, and then only go there after hours. Pay with a money order or cash (not a check). Make sure you have a box large enough for whatever you receive. They used to allow a made-up name on the box too (my own box still has one) but the U.S. post office cracked down on that. And, uh, you can get more than zines this way.


5. Set up a password-locked screensaver with a short timer, for those moments when someone drops by your room. Hello! Not such a big deal with stories, but that fan art can be a little obvious. My friend said she always had a cover file open that she'd toggle to.


6. It goes without saying that you should set your system to clean out your history file and cookies on every shut down.


7. Save no favorites (ha, always think of the obvious) except on external sites like del.icio.us.


8. Use public archives for your stories or, if offered, webspace registered to other people (the latter can be risky so be careful). Remember, if you pay for webspace, your ISP has your name. In an archive, the archive owner assumes all risks and all they have is your email.


9. I assume that I do not need to say something as silly as "use free email" and "don't use your work or home email" for your archive email address or other fandom interaction. But just in case….


10. The drawback to archiving in public archives is that you could lose control of your story or artwork. Most archives allow you to delete at will, and almost all archives will pull down a story at your request. But I do know of one case where the archive owner did not pull the story, and I had a webspace owner that periodically locked me and the other writers out. Some people prefer having their own webspace so that they control the content. For example, when an author turns pro they will often remove their fanfiction from online. It's your call which is more important to you: control, or anonymity.


11. If you like cloak and dagger, or are just more paranoid than the norm, consider using a anonymizer to disguise your IP address when posting stories or interacting in fandom. Though at this point we're getting into tin-hat territory.


12. Your fandom name should become your name in fandom under all circumstances. Do not ever give out your real name (even when I need something sent to me, people get my fake mailbox name). Here are two cautionary tales about this:
    
    The cruel fandom grudge: An (adult) friend felt people were unnecessarily paranoid about using real names, so she used her real name on fics. Her boss was had a copy of the Klingon-to-English dictionary in his office and fandom wasn't a big deal. This worked just fine for years, until some fen got angry with her and set up a wiki (that they alone could edit) saying lots of unpleasant things about her. Now whenever someone googles her real name (including for work) -- that's on the first page. Great.
    
    Fandoms have petty politics and grudges that can last for years. Fandom anonymity seems to create a psychological distance that allows people to do things they wouldn't do to someone they knew in person. The rule of thumb: Give No Ammo.
    
    The possessive fandom loon: Another friend had someone out of the blue offer her webspace for her popular story (by the way, if the offer comes before you know the person, I've never seen it go well). They became online friends, and even exchanged some items through the mail. Then this person became a beta-reader for the story but was so pleased to be "in the know" that she started giving out hints. In addition, she built an archive around the traffic to the popular story. When the writer decided to not allow her to beta-read any more, the webspace owner panicked that the story might be removed (it was the lynchpin of her archive) so threatened to expose the writer to her employer if she did so (unfortunately, the writer was elementary school teacher).

There are plenty of wackos anywhere, and fandom spans the globe; unfairly, they don't come with warning labels. The guy in the SGC uniform who's worked out declensions in Goa'uld can be perfectly normal while the pleasant mother of two can be a psycho. Keep fandom and real life separate.

As they say in the S&M community: play safe, and have fun.

Comments

[fer-de-lance.livejournal.com]

File names: there's nothing less interesting than a string of numbers for a filename. Labelling it PORN attracts attention.

...Hence why, when I was making my first tentative forays into the world of writing smut, I titled the document "Internet Setup" rather than, say, "Lance's Stories" or "storyratedR" (or "donotreadthis"). ((Grins))

I also made copious use of the "cover page" for pulling up when people walked by, and the cache-clearing stuff.

Favourites have to be saved, alas, because I just have so many of them... but I took an approach similar to the document titling, and they are all buried in innocuously-named folders, with any reference to slash or rating removed from the link name. (Same goes for saved fic and fan art on my hard drive-- buried about eight folders deep amidst the innocuous stuff, with totally innocent folder names at every level.)

While still at home I was also very much a fan of the password-protected screensaver set to one minute, and incidentally I can now go to the bathroom, fix a snack, answer a phone, or make tea in exactly 59 seconds. :D

Sadly, I like being paranoid, and I think I ought to be more so. (I need to come up with some infallible way from making screw-ups like using the fannish, pr0n-filled journal to comment in RL friends' journals because I forgot what I was signed in under! And things like that!) I do occasionally think I should use an anonymous-ISP thing, because while my parents are pretty technically inept, my RL friends are another matter, and of course there's employers and acqaintances and so on, and it would be deadly embarrassing, at minimum, to be "discovered"!

[aerynvala.livejournal.com]

Favourites have to be saved, alas, because I just have so many of them...

One way around that one is del.icio.us or another web-based bookmarking service.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Thank you, exactly. The web-based bookmarking is also handy for computer crashes which seem to always wipe your favorites.

Oh jeeze, I'm behind on replies here, aren't I?

Icarus

[aerynvala.livejournal.com]

There's also jump drives. Those lovely little USB drives that can store your bookmarks, and I think even your browser. I'm not sure if it was Firefox or some other Mozilla browser, but one of them can sit on your jump drive and run from there. So it's nicely portable.

[waywardoctagon.livejournal.com]

You can run Firefox from a USB drive, but I've found it's very slow. I always copy the Firefox folder(which has the broser and my profile, with cookies and all) to the desktop while I'm browsing, then use Start->Run to run it from that folder with that profile(What goes in the Run box looks like this: '"C:\Documents and Settings\[name\Desktop\Firefox from E\Firefox\firefox.exe" -profile "C:\Documents and Settings\name\Desktop\Firefox from E\FFProfile"') and then delete it(or sometimes move it back to E:\ if I've changed something) when I'm done. Bit of a hassle, but it was incredibly frustrating dealing with the slowness and the pauses the other way. It might depend on the USB drive, though. (I have a SanDisk cruzer mini.)

I run Trillian from it, though(and, wow, there's stuff in my IM logs that I would NOT want someone to find :O but I've set it as just one huge, long file so that'd probably provide some discouragement.) and that works fine.

[rachelmap.livejournal.com]

You could even save them in private or friends-only LJ entries.

[waywardoctagon.livejournal.com]

RE: favorites--del.icio.us has an option to make bookmarks private now. It's a checkbox marked "Do not share this bookmark" and when you look at them while logged in it shows you which ones are private.