Ang Kape Ni LaTtEX

Recently I’ve come across some commercials on Youtube from the US that illustrate the risk of posting personal information and photos in the internet. This is particularly relevant in there where sexual predation via the internet had become a real problem in the late 90s, early 2000s.

I had the same quandary when my wife put up our contact information for I-NAV Travel and Tours. Naturally, because it was a home-based venture, business and personal contact information was almost one and the same. While there were risks in doing that, the fact that we depended solely on the internet as a marketing tool, as well as the fact that it will be immensely difficult to obtain trust in business transactions if, say, we withheld our real name. The necessity to publish contact information superseded the need to protect ourselves from the risks of online information mining, whether real or imagined.

So far, in the whole year that we’ve done that, the only annoyances that we’ve faced are some anonymous guys trying to add my wife on Friendster. Sorry guys, if you’re not gonna do any business with us, no luck for you. Besides, she’s already taken by me, and if you try to pull anything funny off to get my wife’s attention, I’ll cut yours off. Raaaawwr. Hope that’s clear

So, giving up anonimity is really a risk that we have to take, if only to establish both our sincerity and credibility. Of course, further measures can be taken in that direction; joining business contact repositories like the Asian Business Directory will not only publish contact information, it may benefit online businesses through more extensive networking capabilities.

In the end, it’s really up to you but, as a rule of thumb, don’t give up personal information if you don’t have to.