Bloggers pull the drapes on sensitive information

Information might want to be free, but some bloggers are taking advantage of new privacy-protection services to shield their content from prying eyes. Of course, the vast majority of blogs remain semi-private simply because few people ever stumble across them.

And with many bloggers desperate for readers, it seems counterintuitive for anyone to password-protect posts.

But after considering bloggers who’ve been fired for mocking bosses online — and those who blow their chances at landing jobs when hiring managers read about their drunken exploits on MySpace and Facebook — the privacy push makes more sense.

The Blogger in Beta version of Google’s popular free service, launched in August, enables users to restrict access to “only readers I choose.” After a two-week guest-viewing period, invited readers must log in (using the e-mail account designated by the blogger) to keep seeing posts.

I happened across the service while researching last week’s column on diet bloggers. Clicking the link for Twice the Man: An Obese Man Beating Obesity and Becoming Fit opens a page stating, “This blog is open to invited readers only.” Google asks visitors to log in “if you are a reader of this blog”—but there’s no way to contact the site’s author and request access.

So if Twice the Man doesn’t know you, you aren’t getting into his blog (unless, perhaps, you’re a skilled hacker). The same holds true for many of the 500 or so Blogger Beta users who’ve turned their sites into gated communities. (A few do post e-mail addresses on the login page where wannabe readers can send access requests.)

Blogging anonymously but openly isn’t enough protection for some writers, apparently. Given how easy it can be to expose bloggers by tracing IP addresses or mining posts for identifying details, that’s understandable.

Bloggers might restrict sites to a close circle of readers to keep relationship discussions on the down low, collaborate on projects or share candid assessments of work and life situations. Private Blogger Beta sites include The X Girlfriend, Sex and Shanghai, My [Not So] Grand Afghanistan Adventure, My Experience as a New Teacher, My Naked Truths, Private Thoughts from a Foster Mom, The Shady Files, Uncensored Words, Bar Stool Visions and Her Insane Blabberings.

These services also raise some more intriguing possibilities. What if you were invited to read a restricted blog only to discover the author was anonymous — and writing uncomfortable things about you? Or what if Chinese dissidents, say, or terrorist plotters used private blogs to avoid government detection?

Some of those examples sound like thriller plots, but here’s a more plausible scenario: entrepreneurial webmasters use private blog services as free platforms for paid subscription sites that provide everything from financial information to porn.

In reality, most bloggers will restrict site access to create discrete (and discreet) online communities of family, friends and even business associates. They’ll likely use invite-only blogs to share photos and keep in touch without giving the world access to their Thanksgiving plans and updates on Uncle Buster’s groin surgery.

That’s what Vox.com is banking on, anyway. The new free blogging service from San Francisco-based Six Apart Ltd. (of TypePad fame) enables users to post photos, audio clips, videos and text on cordoned-off pages.

MySpace and other social networking sites offer some similar privacy options, but Vox is being pitched to Web users older than 25. This is your father’s (and mother’s) online community. “We think it is about publishing the stuff you care about to the people you care about,” Six Apart co-founder Mena Trott told Reuters recently.

Private blogs are also environmentally friendly: Set one up as a personal diary with no authorized readers and you might end up saving a few trees.