Scratch writes:
Ben McGuire was another person mentioned by Harmony, and I believe that he's relatively young, too (at least that's my impression; I could be wrong).
I am 36 (almost 37). I suppose for many of you, that's relatively young.
I am in IT by profession. This means that I generally hold a different view of the internet, internet forums, and the like. I generally post under my real name, since, after all, I tend to feel that there really is no such thing as anonymity on the internet. And, I really don't have a problem with people pointing out things they find on the internet to others. In my own experience, it happens quite regularly. I think that if people want to try to remain anonymous in a particular forum, then they need to work very hard to do so. I find myself, on occaision, playing one or more on-line computer games (as a way to de-stress), and in those venues, and the associated public forums, I work very hard to protect my personal identity. When my kids are on the internet, I work hard to protect their identities and to show them how to do it themselves (at least as far as it is possible). But my family also is quite aware of the fact that I can use the internet to find out a great deal of personal information about just about anyone. I don't see that the internet provides a great deal of anonymity, and I have used that in the past in order to complete my work assignments.
I am not really all that good at it either. I have a brother in the Army in Special Forces, who works right now as a computer forensics analyst dealing with terror related issues. He is better at it than I am.
I think that its a fairly trusting viewpoint to think that you can post information about yourself on the internet and expect that others will not eventually find it - your family, your employer, anyone interested in finding out about you.
And while this may describe what happened with Eric, it remains an issue that Eric clearly had some expectations of privacy that simply do not exist.
That's my opinion (as requested in the OP).
I think, if I were to guess at why Scratch is uncomfortable with this, I think its probably the reason why most people get uncomfortable when they see this aspect of the internet. It isn't pleasant to think that none of us really have any privacy here. How much does Big Brother really look at? And we don't want to think that we need to tiptoe around because of some concern that something we say or write can come back at some future point to bite us in the ass ....
So I try not to put anything into public places that I wouldn't be willing to publicly defend. (Although looking at stuff I wrote 15 years ago makes me cringe sometimes ....)