Blogging Risks and The Tragic Case of Kathy Sierra
In the last couple of years, I have
written here and elsewhere about blogging risks from both a corporate and
individual standpoint. Never in my wildest dreams would I have envisioned
a blogger being so terrorized by death and other threats that he/she would
be hiding in a house out of fear. So scared that they would back out of
speaking engagements. The closest I have heard to this is an incident Rocky
Oliver wrote about back in 2004.
In that incident, written up in an entry entitled "The
Scary Side of Blogging",
a blogger was being cyberstalked and called at home by some nutcase in
Poland. But because the stalker was so far away, the risk was perhaps somewhat
mitigated.
Rocky asked a simple question. Was the
incident a tempest in a teapot? As Rock said, it should give us all pause
for thought. Why? Because of what is happening to A-List blogger and Head
First Java author Kathy
Sierra. She has been receiving
what the police have called credible death and other threats in the blogging
world. These threats are so serious that she is terrified for her life.
She is hiding out in her house. She has cancelled at least one speaking
engagement. It is said that the on-line world is reflective of society
as a whole. We also like to think that as professionals we are somewhat
isolated from these realities. But as this case shows we are not.
I did not know about what is happening
to Kathy when I wrote my entry yesterday, joking about having a "stalkr"
on Flickr. But it is things like this that drove me to getting those photos
of my daughters (and their castmates) removed from Flickr. It is why you
will very, very rarely see me writing about my family on here, and if i
do, names are not used. We cannot control everything and every psycho out
there, but we can do whatever possible in our own little worlds to protect
ourselves, our friends, and most importantly our families.
I truly hope that Kathy's situations
is resolved quickly in a positive manner. Nobody deserves what she is going
through. Nobody.
Related Links
Rocky
Oliver: The Scary Side of Blogging
Kathy
Sierra: Death threats against bloggers are NOT "protected speech"
(why I cancelled my ETech presentations)