Invasion of Privacy

Privacy has many meanings to me.

       I am one who prefers to lurk in shadows, coveting my private times, my private spaces, my private thoughts, and my private writings.

       Although I write in a public forum such as this, I still consider it a private matter. No family members know of my space here, no 3 dimensional friends know of it's existence, no one knows about my space, unless I've showed them the pathway. If you are reading this because you've stumbled upon my pages via other journals and such, I still consider that part of the private club we all have enlisted in.  

       Therefore, on the premise that these pages are a private matter, that contains my extremely personal thoughts and musings, it would be of no surprise that I'm extremely upset about signing onto my journal and being accosted by flashing lights of Quizno's ad banners.

       I used to believe the worst thing someone could do within my personal pages was leave a nasty comment, therefore defiling my personal walls and confines with heartless or callous notions. I stand corrected now.

       What I never dreamed would happen, that people within the confines of AOL corporate, would take it upon themselves to sneak into my personal pages during the middle of the night, hijack the entire upper portion of my journal and defile it with advertisements of companies I may or may not even like.

       Not only is it ugly, it upsets the balance, the ambiance, the peaceful appreciation I had always felt within the walls of my personal space.

I did not give permission for anyone to change the walls of my personal space.
I did not open the doors of my personal space to be spray painted with AOL graffiti.
I did not condone or warrant any such changes in something that carries my personal screen name, that I pay a high price per second online, and claim as my own.

Should I stand to be corrected? Is this space not something that I personally created, that I have labored with over the course of a year? That I've placed my thoughts, my emotions, my tears and my joys within? If I had known................that someone else could come in at any time and dictate what was contained in my personal pages, I would have chosen a different safe route to write my words.

It's not even about the hideous advertisements across the entire top of my journal. This is about an invasion of privacy and that is something that I cannot stand for. No warning, no choice, no voice, no course of action. I won't stand for an invasion of privacy in my home, how am I to be expected to accept this invasion of my personal web space?

I can't and I won't.

I have seen where in entries, a writer has blasted another, a situation, and commenters come along and agree and sometimes, things become a lynch mob, lemmings style party. Usually, I do not condone this type of behavior.

But on such a thing as blatant invasion of privacy, I will hope, others will voice their thoughts, and just possibly, many voices can make a difference.

AOL writes on their feedback page
"We are committed to putting you and your family first in everything we do"

If this is true, they will quietly apologize for invading my personal space
and quickly remove their propaganda from my walls.
Otherwise, my clone journal, created specifically for me to muse around with my novel writing, will become my refugee journal.

http://intheshadowoftheiris.blogspot.com/