Celebrating Five Years Online!

Five years ago today, I started the I've Been Mugged blog. Since then, I've learned a lot about identity theft, fraud, privacy, and data breaches. This blog has been a good tool to organize my thoughts, learnings, and the online resources I've found.

And wow has rreadership grown! During those early days in 2007, about 8,000 people total read this blog during six months. Now, about the same number of users read the blog every nine ten days.

For that growth, some thank-you messages are necessary. First, I'd like to thank all I've Been Mugged readers. I am grateful for our readership and for the comments you have submitted. We have explored together many interesting topics, and I look forward to more exploration.

Second, I'd like to thank the bloggers and the consumer advocates I've met online. Without their suggestions and encouragement, The quality of I've Been Mugged posts wouldn't be as high as it has been. Some bloggers I'd like to thank by name: Lori Magno, Diane Danielson, Michael Krigsman, Drew McLelland, Ryan Barrett, and Ronni Bennett (who leads by example far more than she realizes).

Third, I'd like to thank guest authors Bill Seebeck, and R. Michelle Green. Fourth, I'd like to thank the Privacy Crusaders. If you know who they are, then you know the good they've done.

Fifth, I'd like to thank IBM for losing my sensitive personal data during their February 2007 data breach. That incident caused me to start blogging, and more importantly to start thinking about the privacy of my personal information. The more I learned about data breaches and the way companies assist (or don't) their data-breach victims, the more I realized that I had to do something. Rather than be angry, blogging seemed like a healthy and appropriate response.

If you haven't noticed yet, I named this blog in honor of IBM's data breach = I've Been Mugged.

And, I especially want to thank my wife, Alison. Without her support and flexibility, I couldn't write I've Been Mugged.

What's next? The pace of change both on the Internet and in sectors like banking provide a wealth of topics. We'll continue to write about identity theft topics, data breaches, privacy, banking, and areas where corporate responsibility is lagging. Of course, we'll follow hot topics such as mobile deata security, health care breaches, and behavioral advertising.

We'll continue to report on both emerging and controversial issues that affect consumers. And, we'll sprinkle this blog with plenty of ID-theft humor, since it's never all doom and gloom.

If you are a new visitor, there are several easy ways to explore the blog:

• The near right column includes a tag cloud with subjects
• The far right column lists both popular discussions and my favorite posts
• The near right column also includes a collection of posts to help you use Facebook safely
• If you are curious about a topic, use the search box on the right
• To access product and service reviews, select Reviews in the above horizontal navigation bar
• To browse a collection of ranked lists, see Rankings

Comments

[eema]

good job! when is the party??