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Journalling - Paper Or Digital - Privacy Worries


Citygirl

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Hi, I am new here and am hoping someone can give me some advice. I have always journalled in notebooks, I find it therapuetic and its something I feel I need to do when the need arises (don't journal every day now). Quite a while ago I destroyed ten years worth of notebooks in a panic about them being read, I regretted it and started up journalling again in notebooks. They started to mount up, I use hard backed A5 books. I keep them in a locked tin in my cubbyhole. I live alone but have a boyfriend who visits regularly (and is quite nosey). I also fear the journals being read after I am gone as there are things in there I wouldn't want my family or my boyfriend to see.

 

I have tried journalling on the computer before, it didn't feel the same so I went back to paper. But the worry of privacy got the better of me. I decided to scan my journals, destroy the originals and write on the computer in future. As I have quite a lot of notebooks and a slow flatbed scanner, I decided to pay a company to scan them for me onto a disk. I now have the disk which can be transferred onto a hard drive and encrypted, this makes me feel safe. However, I have yet to destroy the notebooks, the pages have had to be cut free from the binding in order for the scanning to take place so they are held together with elastic bands. I intend to shred them but can't seem to find the courage to do it, even though I have them in digital form now.

 

As for future journalling, I still love pen and paper but I still worry about privacy. I am thinking of writing anything too personal on the computer and keeping a paper journal for general things that I don't mind people reading. However, would this get too complicated?

 

I need to figure out how to keep a paper journal (ie in a looseleaf notepad so if I don't have my laptop on me I can always write personal entries aswell and rip them out and type them up as soon as I get to my laptop and shred the paper), or carry on in a hardbacked book. Or I have hit on the idea of using one of those five year diaries juat for general observations and everything else goes on the computer but don't know if I could be disciplined enough to fill it in every day.

 

I also need to gain courage to destroy the hard backed journals, them being in a locked tin doesn't satisfy me as I know that locks such as this could easily be picked. Plus I have paid to have the scanning done now.

 

Info about me - I can type faster than I write, I am a trained typist so typing up most of the journalling is easier on my hands.

 

Any advice will be most welcome.

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I have all my paper journals going back to Junior High. When I was younger (high school age), I worried about people reading them. Now that I'm in my 30's, that fear is pretty much banished. I did destroy one, from a period of time when I had a boyfriend I simply didn't care to remember.

 

I cannot imagine wanting to destroy all my paper journals now. Are you writing state secrets in yours, that you are so worried about security? Put them in a box and wrap it up with duct tape. If that doesn't deter a nosy boyfriend, then you have a boyfriend problem, as opposed to a security problem.

 

I also keep a journal online, and have for ten years. I use livejournal. I periodically download the entire journal to disk, to ensure that I don't lose anything. It's not a particularly great platform, so I'm sure there are better out there.

"Wer schweigt, stimmt zu."

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Damn the privacy issues - sell the film rights! You'll make enough not to have to worry about it ever again!

The Good Captain

"Meddler's 'Salamander' - almost as good as the real thing!"

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You might think about switching to an A5 tablet and scanning the pages as you go. You would still have the writing experience and can place the scanned images into a secure file. Another thing you might try is the Evernote Moleskine notebook, if you have a compatible device. Lastly there are the note-to-PC pens, which I suggest only in passing given my loathing of BP pens.

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Think twice and then twice again before you even think about destroying them! You might really regret this one day!

If you are really that concerned then get yourself a safe deposit box

How funny! I had an almost opposite reaction! I have journaled for 30 years or so and tried digital. I didn't like it al all and I worried about the privacy of the digital.

I think I tried it for all of two days and went back to my trusty Quo Vadis Habana - and never gave digital a second thought.

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"No I don't have those type of secrets, just private things I don't want anyone to see."

 

That's the difference between a journal and a blog. Bloggers obviously want people to read, and generally speaking more readers = greater success. Journaling is for you. I've been journaling since I was a teenager in the army (Viet Nam era) so I've got stacks and stacks of old jornals and when I was younger I was pretty concerened that others would read my 'private thoughts'. Thankfully I still have them, every once in a great while I flip through them, and I must tell you, almost all of it is a yawn, the things that I thought were way too revealing to reveal, well, much of that just seems very sophomoric.

 

Why keep them? three reasons: I see the progression of world events through the eyes of the boy and young man I once was. Though some of it is painfully immature, there is some reassurance knowing I can see that for what it is now (I've matured, shock!) and finally, just like my photography, about one passage in 100 is truely pleasing, shows some slight glimpse of atristic ability.

 

I think you may be a little uptight about what you have there, but if you give it a little time (human scale time, not internet scale) you might learn to love your remisences, and at the same time loose your concern to a degree about what others might think of you. Perhaps what you think of you is more important. I think the two most important ingedients in journaling are honesty and art. Judging by your notes here I suspect you have the first part down. As for the art part, I can't think of anything less areful than fast typing. Pen and ink are slow and that is a good thing. without the backspace and delete key, you are automatically more inclined to think before writing, to get it down a little more artfully, a little more succinctly, or if the emotions are flowing, perhaps a little more savagely.

 

Forget about others reading this in the fuutre and start thinking about you reading this in the future. I guarantee you will find things in there that you would never remember if you had not written them down.

 

If I offend I apologize, I did not mean for this to sound so preachy.

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Think twice and then twice again before you even think about destroying them! You might really regret this one day!

If you are really that concerned then get yourself a safe deposit box

How funny! I had an almost opposite reaction! I have journaled for 30 years or so and tried digital. I didn't like it al all and I worried about the privacy of the digital.

I think I tried it for all of two days and went back to my trusty Quo Vadis Habana - and never gave digital a second thought.

 

 

 

Completely agree!

 

 

 

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You could buy one of those small safes to lock them in. I don't know what else to offer. I also have all of my journals going back to junior high and I've never really worried about anyone reading them- I just keep them on my bookshelf. When I had a boyfriend I shared my journals with him so I had nothing to hide from him either. Whatever you do, don't destroy your journals, someday you will regret doing that. Personally I love looking over my old junior high and high school journals and laughing at how trivial my problems were then.

I'd rather spend my money on pens instead of shoes and handbags.

 

>>> My Blog <<<

 

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Anything you put on an encrypted computer disk will be unreadable in about ten years. There won't be a computer on the planet that can read it or run the encryption/decryption software. Remember the 8-inch floppy disk? How about the 4 1/4 incher? Three and a half, anybody?. Putting anything on a computer medium is just a slow way to throw it away.

 

Unless you destroy it first, anything you write on paper will be read by somebody else, eventually. You may have to wait for an archeologist to dig it up, but it is going to be read. Be careful what you write. Leave a little to your reading public's imagination.

Can a calculator understand a cash register?

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Anything you put on an encrypted computer disk will be unreadable in about ten years. There won't be a computer on the planet that can read it or run the encryption/decryption software.

 

 

I have lost things this way! Conversely, anything written to a hard drive or server is NEVER really secret, is it? My adult children amuse me with tales of their "locked" and "secure" digital everything, but I remember from back in the stone age, those I knew who wrote code for a living always created exits and entrances for their own ease of access. NOTHING is truly secret on a hard drive. Until that particular technology becomes -- as you note -- obsolete.

 

Oh, and Citygirl :W2FPN:

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Thanks all for your replies. I do feel confused however. I thought things would be safe on a hard drive, after all a lot of work goes onto hard drives these days, for instance if I were to write my life story or a novel I would keep it electronically. I am all for writing journal entries but a whole book in longhand, well no. Most companies keep things electronically now, filing systems are a thing of the past.

 

I do want to keep journal entries in some way. I don't want to write or type and then destroy. If I do decide to keep my paper journals, what about the money I paid to have them scanned which was about £150, I would feel I have wasted this money. Plus the journals are now held together by elastic bands, could I keep them and reread them in that format?

 

I don't know how to get over this privacy issue. I have written things I wouldn't want anyone to read, I am wary of shredding the books but can't get the privacy worry out of my head. I suppose I could go through them and just destroy some of the pages.

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In my opinion, journalling on paper is safer than doing so electronically, if privacy is concerned. You'd be amazed at the digital footprints we leave each day, it's shocking. At least with paper journals, I have peace of mind knowing exactly where they're kept and that nobody will ever discover its contents unless they find the journals themselves (which seems to be your concern).

 

Apart from the different feel of journalling in a notebook vs digitally, digital formats are constantly changing. It won't come as a surprise if your digital entries become unreadable in the near future. Please don't destroy your journals; they are precious memories which cannot be replicated or replaced.

 

If you are really concerned over someone discovering your journals, you can go as far as to build a floor safe or wall safe and keep your journals in there. If someone goes as far as to break into your safe for the sake of reading your journals, he/she has some serious issues. If someone breaks in there hoping to find cash or jewellery, he'd be disappointed to find a bunch of worn out books and probably wouldn't bother/have the time to read through them or steal them.

 

I hope this puts you at ease, at the very least.

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In my opinion, journalling on paper is safer than doing so electronically, if privacy is concerned. You'd be amazed at the digital footprints we leave each day, it's shocking. At least with paper journals, I have peace of mind knowing exactly where they're kept and that nobody will ever discover its contents unless they find the journals themselves (which seems to be your concern).

 

Apart from the different feel of journalling in a notebook vs digitally, digital formats are constantly changing. It won't come as a surprise if your digital entries become unreadable in the near future. Please don't destroy your journals; they are precious memories which cannot be replicated or replaced.

 

If you are really concerned over someone discovering your journals, you can go as far as to build a floor safe or wall safe and keep your journals in there. If someone goes as far as to break into your safe for the sake of reading your journals, he/she has some serious issues. If someone breaks in there hoping to find cash or jewellery, he'd be disappointed to find a bunch of worn out books and probably wouldn't bother/have the time to read through them or steal them.

 

I hope this puts you at ease, at the very least.

 

 

Thanks, this does make me feel better but my journals have already been scanned and the pages are now loose.

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Citygirl

 

One of the joys of the English language, especially in its superior Scots variant, is its power to obfuscate through metaphor. Read enough cryptic crosswords or legislation and you'll soon get the idea of bending meanings into a filigree of coruscating ambiguity.

 

Or just write in code. Loads of historical examples to follow up on for inspiration. It's time consuming, at least a seven on the inner-geek scale, but almost free.

 

Just think of the spare money. So that's a couple of ways you could get round buying a safe. And just in time for the sales.

Abair ach beagan is abair gu math e.

 

Say but little and say it well.

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The thing is, and not to increase your paranoia, is that they could have already been read, by the people that scanned them in.

 

That said, an electronic copy, unless it gets into the public domain, would most likely be read by a hacker, or someone you don't know.

 

Whereas a handwritten journal, would have to be read by someone you know as it is in your house (Except a burglar obviously)

 

As someone who blogs, and is just about to start a handwritten journal, I understand what you mean. I have a wife, 2 teenage daughters and a 10 year old son who could read it.

 

Am I bothered? Not really, as someone said, it is not up to me to bear my soul on the page, just to talk about things, and work out thoughts and feelings, so its not going to be rated 18, or going to bad mouth anyone.

 

As someone said, get a small safe. You can pick one up for £100, which would fit 10 years worth in it, (assuming no more than 2 books a year), after that, stick them in a box, tape it within an inch of its life and put it in the loft. And then start to fill the safe up again.

 

If someone goes in, you will know, and can take whatever action necessary (Dump em!)

 

Ren

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Learn to write in cursive -- in a few years only a select few will be able to read it anyway, and then perhaps only laboriously.

 

And I'm not actually joking. I have a 20 year old nephew who can keyboard just fine but can barely write at all, even in manuscript, and literally cannot read a word of cursive.

 

On the other hand, if you're a Gen-Xer like myself and you and all your peers were taught cursive, this suggestion might not be helpful. :D

 

Happy holidays!!!

Not really a scribe, more of a Pharisee...

 

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

-- Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

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Learn to write in cursive -- in a few years only a select few will be able to read it anyway, and then perhaps only laboriously.

 

And I'm not actually joking. I have a 20 year old nephew who can keyboard just fine but can barely write at all, even in manuscript, and literally cannot read a word of cursive.

 

On the other hand, if you're a Gen-Xer like myself and you and all your peers were taught cursive, this suggestion might not be helpful. :D

 

Happy holidays!!!

This is sad, but true. I teach middle schoolers and a good number of them cannot read cursive.

 

 

As for the OP's concerns, digital storage for the most part isn't about privacy, but redundancy. Putting your information on a physical storage device, on a cloud system, on a web server, and any digital medium is really for posterity. If your hard-drive fails, you can retrieve it from any other place you may have saved it. And that's actually a good thing, IMHO. I wouldn't suggest having ONLY ONE file of your journals, because as people have mentioned, digital storage isn't as reliable as a physical copy yet. Computers break, encrypted data becomes corrupted/unreadable, passwords to accounts are forgotten... However, file formats aren't a real issue if you've converted them into any standard extension, like RTF, DOC, or PDF. I'm assuming since they're scanned, they'd be PDF files. But, if they were saved as a proprietary format within an encryption program, I'd be worried.

 

Like others have suggested, do keep your journals. How you feel about your recorded life may change within the span of a year, much more a decade. The nostalgia from tactile objects is far more powerful than a filename on a screen. You can punch holes in them to put in ring files, seal with duct tape, and store them somewhere inconspicuous. Or, just roll them up, wrap in elastic bands, and store them like scrolls! Bury them in a time capsule, even!

 

As for journalling digitally, there are several kinds of software for that, but you can just set up a blog anywhere like livejournal or wordpress which are simple and free. The very public nature of the Internet actually makes it quite easy to remain private. Unless you're actively pushing for your five minutes of fame, you'll easily be lost within the memes, the tweets, and tumblr reblogs of the millions of faceless people that make up the Web. You can easily click the option to not have your site indexed by search engines, so you can't be googled. You can password protect your website so no content can be revealed, or just save entries as draughts so you can only see them in an administrator panel. Most blogs like wordpress also allow you to make backups so your entries can be saved.

 

I also know of people who keep journals via gmail, which also works. Or, write your journal on a word processor and instead of saving it on your hard-drive, just save it on a private cloud storage site, so at least there's that extra step in case someone is snooping about your computer.

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Citygirl,

 

Others have given you good suggestions for methods of keeping your journals safe, so I won't repeat them.

 

For the loose pages that have already been scanned, talk to a bookbinder. It may well be possible to have them bound into books again and I doubt the cost will prove prohibitive (certainly I was pleasantly surprised how inexpensive it was to have my dissertation bound in hardback).

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I do want to keep journal entries in some way. I don't want to write or type and then destroy. If I do decide to keep my paper journals, what about the money I paid to have them scanned which was about £150, I would feel I have wasted this money. Plus the journals are now held together by elastic bands, could I keep them and reread them in that format?

 

The money you spent on the scanning is gone now, regardless of what you decide to do in the future, so you can effectively ignore that when making your decision, IMHO. For now I think you should just focus on how you feel about the originals and whether you want to go forward using digital or physical media.

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