This post originally appeared in the Kenosha News as part of the column Sunday Mornings With Basil Willis – April 4, 2011

My wife and I just spent a week in Florida at my mom’s Gulf coast waterfront home. It was our first vacation of significance in almost two years, since before cancer rerouted the flow of our lives. We planned on doing absolutely nothing; sleeping in late, sitting by the pool to replenish our vitamin D stores, watching the tide roll away, catching up on reading and perhaps a little writing. It was to be a decidedly analog affair, and for the most part it was, besides me rereading Of Human Bondage on mom’s new Kindle (what would Maugham think of that?).
But time marches on and we could not completely escape the digital tentacles of our wired world. My phone chains me to my regular life with client requests, work email, Wisconsin legal news and the requisite Facebook check-ins, this time mocking my northern friends with pictures of me shirtless and drinking in the sun. These are chains I wear willingly, but ones I choose carefully, weighing mental health against getting left behind.
After a few months of kicking the idea around, I introduced my mom to Facebook and helped her set up an account. It is a complicated enough process that I wanted to do it while I was with her. Ninety-eight percent of my interaction with Facebook is through my iPhone, a slick, stripped-down version of the site which is simple to use and utterly free of crud. The full website is a minefield of gadgets, games, scams and security breaches waiting to happen. The daily training sessions Beth and I had with my mom were mostly dedicated to showing her what not to click on, and learning to tell Facebook “no” when it, or a third party app, asks for access to her information or friend list.

We locked her security settings down to bare metal and then began adding friends. Searching through my mom’s newly created account, my wife and I could not be found. Perfect. That’s exactly the way we want it. Unlike professional sites such as Linked In, where I want to advertise my page, my personal meanderings on Facebook I guard like the queen’s jewels. My circle of friends is literally a reflection of my friends in the real world and the bar for membership is set high. My threshold for friending someone is this: If you called me at 3 am and needed to be bailed out of jail, accused of something horrible, would I help you?

Beth and I have even taken the additional step of using pseudonyms on Facebook. Our non-tech friends think it silly, but what you post there lasts forever and you don’t have to go far to find stories about people getting fired for saying things their employer didn’t agree with. I do not friend anyone I currently work with or people I haven’t spoken to in twenty years. While my friends are able, you cannot find me, or my soul, on Facebook. And if you, like me, allow yourself to be part of the corporate machine and have any concern for having a career, you would be wise to do the same.

If you google my name you will find exactly what I want you to find, nothing less, nothing more. You will see my personal web site and my Linked In profile. You will find a man with the same name from Belize who is a career criminal and someone else with my name on Facebook. You will not see any of my political leanings, philosophies, rants, drunken episodes or anything else that could be used against me by a current or future employer, lending institution or any other organization I want to be a part of that has a vetting process. My digital avatar is not an accident; it has been carefully crafted and is vigilantly maintained.

Google Alerts is perhaps the most powerful tool in curating one’s online identity. You can set up Google Alerts to notify you when any terms you specify are added to the entire Web. I am lucky enough to have a relatively unique name, and any time it appears on the Web, Google sees it and lets me know. Usually that guy in Belize getting arrested again. It is a little unnerving how fast the updates come.

Whatever you do, be careful at work. I’m not the tinfoil hat conspiracy type, but I manage corporate networks and can see everything you do. Facebook activity, logging on to your personal webmail, and your “secure” banking sessions are not private. Assume that every click and key stroke is being recorded, because at most organizations it is. And if you’re using your personal smartphone on the company Wi-Fi I can see that traffic too. Being asked by a manager to run an Internet activity report on an employee, especially someone I like, is gut wrenching. What you say, can and will be used against you.

Careful cultivation of one’s online self is a reflection of our digital society and will only become more important. I cringe at the thought of having had Facebook as a teen. I would love nothing more than to be able to sustain myself with a craft that is impervious to public opinion, and be able to say whatever I want online. In fact I would like it very much if said craft was based entirely on saying what I felt online. Until then, my pseudonym will have to do the talking for me.