Last week, I wondered about how much you can say online without crossing lines after someone threatened me with the potential of lawsuits for saying things that didn’t even mention any names or specifics. Ironically, I had an experience the next day that made me even more wary of blogging.

I started this blog with the plan for it to remain mostly anonymous. People could know my first name and general job title and field, but I was going to refrain from using my last name, company name, or any other peoples’ names. This way I could write about issues at work without slamming anyone in particular and without being found out. Then my blog became included in Brazen Careerist, an amazing network of career-minded Gen Y bloggers. I was so flattered to be included, I forgot to pay attention to the fact that my last name was used on my profile page for their site.

On Friday, I was contacted by a colleague at the company I just left. At that job, each of us had Google e-mail alerts set up for our names so we could see when our stories were indexed. She has been monitoring my messages since I left and my name popped up in a Google alert; it was my Brazen Careerist profile page.

She went to it and was able to read all my blog posts. I didn’t blog much about my job until I decided to quit, and then I wrote a few posts about why I chose to quit, my opinion about two weeks’ notice, and other issues I encountered. Some things were positive and many were negative, though nothing named names of people or companies. But she made the point that if you Googled my full name, you could find specifics about where I had been working, and it would be possible to put two and two together.

As ignorant as it sounds, that had never occurred to me before. As much as I loved being a part of Brazen Careerist, I completely neglected to realize that the act of being a part of that network completely removed the anonymity merely by including my last name on a profile page.

My former colleague said she was both concerned about my career and the way this reflected on the company. I was humiliated; I never meant for anyone there to read those posts. I didn’t even realize it would be possible for them to find it. I immediately deleted those posts on my blog and talked to Ryan at Brazen Careerist, who is wonderful and took down those posts on their site immediately, even though two of them were currently featured on BC’s front page. I hope all the evidence was destroyed before anyone else at my last company saw it. I don’t want my reputation to be scarred from this.

As I mentioned, I didn’t really start writing blog posts about how things were at work until I decided to quit, so I don’t think I would have ever been fired over the blog, but I know that isn’t that uncommon these days. On the first day of my internship at a magazine a few years ago, I found out that one of the editors had been fired earlier that morning for blogging negatively on Myspace about things at work. Her boss had zero tolerance for that, so she was dismissed immediately. I don’t think I’d write negative blogs about my job when I was still fully employed somewhere, but my situation goes to show that your reputation can still come into play even when you blog about a place you are no longer employed — even when you don’t mention any names.

Now that I have a new job, I’m afraid to mention work at all. Do I just blog about other things and completely ignore work? Considering I spend around 40 hours a week there, my job is a major part of my life and is a huge factor in my overall happiness and balance. It would be hard to blog about my life without acknowledging my work. But I have a great new job and don’t want to risk it. It wouldn’t be smart to blog about it at all. So what do I do now?

It’s hard to write about my work/life balance if I can’t write about work. I guess I can write about work-related things that don’t relate to me, such as new studies that show how many people wish they could telecommute, but do I just want to recap news? I don’t want to write about my relationship or family, because that’s personal. I could write about life with chronic illness, but Rosalind already kicks butt at that and I’m afraid I’d run out of content. I am only a year and a half out of school, so I’m not enough of an expert on anything for people to take me seriously. Do I keep up this blog and tip-toe around anything related to my job? Do I give up blogging until I am a full-time freelancer and do not have an employer to worry about? Do I wait until I’m an expert in something?

Last week’s blog problem was scary, and this other issue was humiliating. I had a false sense of security and am very cautious going forward. I love being able to use blogging to express myself and interact with others, but I don’t like its dark side.

Have you experienced any privacy blunders related to blogging? Do you think blogging about work should be totally off-limits, even if you don’t use any names?