To go private or not?

I've been debating making my blog private for quite sometime now, well honestly since I created my blog in 2009! I have not really put much thought into it as you can probably tell since I haven't ever mentioned it before..

I don't put anything bad on my blog, I don't talk bad about people or anything, so why make it private right? Well basically just for my safety and those who I might mention/post a pic of on my blog.

With all the "social network" talk that I've been hearing and discussing with friends lately kinda has me a little weary about what I put online. The online web is basically an open book.. I've always had my setting on facebook as private as possible.. A few months back I went threw my facebook albums and deleted over half of them ( probably had 70+ albums), after talking with a few friends and doing some reserach online in reference to jobs etc. I went threw last week and deleted a ton more albums along with any extra info I had on my profile under the "about me" section or the "likes" section and I also took off the year I was born.
I decided to do this since my fiance BD is starting to look for a new job now that he has his certification complete and also for my safety as I will be starting in the part of my school program where I will be at the Elementary school 4 days a week this semester..
One of my dad's friends that owns his own company told my dad that whenever someone comes in with an application the first thing he does is look at their facebook.. Also when his workers call into work and have an excuse why they can't come in, he looks on their facebook to see what they have posted lately, one guy called in sick one day and he looked at his facebook and saw he was out of town that past weekend and had pics of partying and saying how the guy was having such a great time that he was going to stay an extra day.. Welp your boss just caught you in a lie buddy!! Ouch!
My big sis Lindsey sent me the link to this facebook article today and it opened up my eyes to this matter even more...

http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/111722/what-your-facebook-profile-may-be-telling-id-thieves

Also FYI, always check your facebook settings.. Facebook doesn't necessarily go in and "change" your settings but they are always "updating" there privacy/settings and if you don't know this and go in and check it periodically you won't know that you need to "unckeck" something that they might of added that automatically enables others to see about you...



Sorry I sound like a natzee about this but I've heard of too many job situations lately happening and also remember although you have all your settings to as private as possible, there are ALWAYS ways around it, especially with any government type job, they can bypass those settings with the click of a button!!

OK now that I went off on a tangent let me get back on track....... I'm thinking of setting my blog to private, I know it's easy to do but it makes me sad that I might loose some followers since it's not just as simple as clicking "follow."

Sooo here's where I need your help, I know how to set to private but I need all the email address so I can do so!!! Please leave me a comment with your blogger/google account email address so I can add you to my followers list!!

PS. Another reason I'm wanting to do this: I made my comments to where you didn't have to do the password just so it was easier for y'all to leave comments, but then I started getting SO much spam etc on my blogger comments so I changed it back...




I hope I get a lot of comments so I can add a lot of followers to continue viewing my blog!!!!