How To Protect Blogger Privacy
I just flagged him. I suspect he’ll get scared and delete soon, but you can flag too
There seems to be a fair amount of trolls on Kottu revealing personal information. This has disheartened some bloggers, but I was doing some reading and there are protections. Passionately Patient is already removed from wordpress.com for violating their terms of service (not me, someone else reported). I’m looking at how the Blogger Content Policy. For now you can ‘Flag’ his blog as objectionable (as shown above). If you do find it objectionable.
The thing with Nibras Bawa is that he keeps posting peoples personal details and then removing them. Presumably cause he’s scared, or just wants the attention and not the consequences. I’m not really able to gauge his psychological state. However, we can do something about it when people like him try to hurt and defame other people.
Basically, Blogger has the ‘Flag’ button right there. Only issue is that he posts private information and deletes it. This makes it difficult to flag him in time, but it also makes his reveals of private information ultimately toothless. So I dunno. I think it may be fine to ignore him now.
However, in the future, if someone in Blogger reveals your private information, just click the ‘Flag’ button above their blog. On the next page you can click the radio box for ‘Someone is posting my private information’. The only reveal hes has up now is my old address and number, so I selected the publishing unlisted phone number option. And then they’ll look into it. I think the case is pretty clear, he is publishing an unlisted phone number and that’s a violation on Blogger.
I’m assuming that Bawa will see this and take it down cause he’s a bit of a coward that way. However, in the future, if he ever posts someone’s details just flag him as objectionable immediately. It’s a community evaluation, so it helps if more people flag him.
Again, this is bloody waste of time when there’s a humanitarian disaster going on, but I suppose the Kottu terms needed to be cleared up sometime. I’m going to redraft it in line with the EFF’s Blogger’s Rights and link to the Blogger Content Policy and WordPress.com Terms Of Service. In about a week though, mad busy, people are in a bit of bad shape up North.
Regardless, bloggers do have rights. You have them on Kottu, you have them on Blogger and you have them on WordPress. Self hosted blogs are their own world, but bloggers have legal rights as well. You do have a right to privacy. If you report it people will protect you.
Please note that insults and hurt feelings do not count. You have to sort that out with your wits, there’s nothing I or any third party can or should do about that. That’s part of the blogosphere. Threatening people and revealing private information is not. You can and should report it. Contact me, flag the blog on Blogger or file a complaint on WordPress.com.
What Bawa and Passionately Patient have done is wrong, and that’s not just my or anyone else’s opinion. It’s in the terms of service of every major blogging platform, and it’s the law. We can do something about it.
Today on the 
Janith has updated 
This is highly dubious. Miss Travel is a travel/social networking site that connects ‘Generous’ and ‘Attractive’ travelers. To, like, travel together, I guess. It all seems a bit like arranged prostitution and trafficking. This is part of a broader online trend to connect rich men to younger, attractive women. Sites like 
Sri Lankan domestics never say anything, they just stop coming. My maid just stopped coming and when I finally pressed her she said I needed to get a washing machine. I was hoping to ride this one out, but I’ve run out of underwear and I have no choice. I finally caved and bought a washing machine, from 
Certainly for the best. Some of us forget that Freedom of Speech does not mean an abdication of responsibility for our actions.
I guess this is very much a Sri Lankan thing, on and off the web. Some think they are Sherlock Holms or some sort of a thing. it is very much common in Sinhala blogs than English.
I took a look at Nibras’ blog and it was really funny :D
What Nibras has done is not a Sherlock Holmes thing. He’s just in an imagination.
He has just put the whois informations that anybody can see and showing up “Yeah, gotcha!” :D
What a waste of time — this nibrasbawa
Next time you see a such post, screen capture it and mail it to Google,(blogger). It is better if you screen capture the Google cache as it has more information that is visible.
I flagged his blog a few days ago, actually. Also, I’m not sure deleting posts achieves anything — I’m sure Blogger can still access stuff. I think it’s an inbuilt function to monitor kiddie porn etc.
an apt post, considering whats going on these days.. not everyone is totally freaked out by it all, but there ARE a few that actually think NB had some magical powers.. tho when passionatelypatient did the same thing, it kinda proved that it cant be THAT hard.. she never gave off that ‘super sleuth’ vibe.. :D
as for the kottu terms.. i dunno, im not sure they DO need a re-write, but thats upto u… cheers!
Deleting posts does a little. I just saw the famous “Kiss My A…..” post in a cache! so are most of other posts!
Oops! I guess I saw it on his site, someone posted a part of his post as a comment. Guess someone may have saved the post.
It’s just plain stupid; because posting all RD’s personal details didn’t do RD one spot of harm and only served to publicly humiliate Nibras Bawa himself, and show him up as being a psychotic, obsessive coward. Not only that, he’s sexist too, and pretty aggro in general. Doesn’t seem to be able to write a sentence without insulting someone on some petty, irrelevant basis. And kind of weird: I mean, all those pictures, apparently of his daughter? Just plain weird.
[...] The other issue more readily at hand is point 4, libel and obscenity. I try to follow this in the most legal terms. Libel, legally, applies to private not public figures. So, attacking a public figure, organization or named blogger is actually OK. Outing a private figure or anonymous blogger is not. I don’t actually get into the attacking part that much cause I think that’s part of the blogosphere, but I am especially sensitive to anonymous bloggers being outed. And that’s mentioned. Most of the recent removals were simply for that. That is not covered very clearly under most law, but I do think an anonymous blogger has a reasonable right to privacy. I also think it’s important that Kottu is a safe place in that sense, because media is under physical threat here. This privacy issue is discussed further here: How To Protect Blogger Privacy. [...]
One sad European blogger is desperate to drug you into discussion on his new blog. Please, bring him in here. Do not feed your audience to desperate attention seekers. I have tried to leave message like his on his blog. It never was published. Surprise-surprise… With much respect to the way you think and conduct yourself.