Privacy questions for those who use blogger.com

[Emmas Mom]

I know some of you use blogger.com & I have a couple questions about privacy. I have our blog set up as private right now but some of our family are pretty computer challenged & will never figure out how to sign up & get access to our blog. I've had a couple requests to make it "non private". I'm a little hesitant to do that because I wonder about any joe shmoe checking it out BUT I was looking on the main page of blogger.com & it doesn't LOOK like you can just randomly type in a family name & locate a blog. IF we make it an open blog am I correct in thinking that people will still have to get the blog address from us directly?? It's not like they can just find it right? This is one of the reasons I didn't want to do one but our family is enjoying it & since we're far from them...and may soon be moving further away from anyone I want to keep it. Thought? Help?

[ellies mom]

Personally, I wouldn't make the blog "non private". That would be way beyond my comfort level. I guess I figure, they can either figure out how to login or they can call for the occasional update. I see it as being similar to not having a computer.

[KBecks]

The trouble with making it non private is that someone could find you through a search, and not just your name, but any key word that would be included in your blog text. So you could get hits and external viewers from phrases like "cute baby", etc.

I would not make it non-private.

And even if you keep it private, I would put on a stat counter, it's called statcounter.com and a free service and you can monitor who's coming to your site and where they are coming from (IP/city/state,etc.) so you have extra info. about who's really accessing your site. I'd think with private you will know all the people, but I'd rather you keep tabs on it.

[missliss55]

Our blog has been both at private and non-private. When we had it non-private, we used the setting where anyone can read it as long as they know the web address. So anyone random person searching the web could not find our page...they would have to specifically know the web address. We had some family that had difficulty with the whole password thing so we are trying it this way for a while. With all the being said I never use our last name or give too many specifics to where we live. HTH.

[Emmas Mom]

I'm seriously torn on this. We have SOOO many friends/family (well, moreso friends of family) who have non private blogs. My Mom had issues signing in & two of my friends can't figure it out. I did get a counter (from sitemeter....another friend recommended it before I read about statcounter). It's pretty cool because it shows the ISP's, cities/states & there's even a feature where you see a world map & where your hits are coming from.