Until 1995 or 1996 (I forget the date, but I remember where I was living at the time) I had all sorts of information in my .sig file. The more useful info was name/phone/address.
I thought phone number and address (mailing address, that is) were useful because folks would have a convenient way to find my phone number if they needed to call me, or my address if they needed to mail me something. This was before everyone was carrying PDAs in their pockets, and the sig info had come in handy for folks in the past.
...and I didn't think it could do any harm.
I was wrong. :(
One afternoon I got a phone call from some woman about some conversation she thought we had had in a white supremacist irc channel the evening prior.
If there's a group for which I have a prejudiced and unreasoned hatred, it's bigots. That may well make me a bigot myself, but I am not a white supremacist.
I was too upset to remember the details of our brief conversation, but the gist was she was sure she had the right person because she had the right combination of name, phone number and address. I was just as sure she had the wrong person.
Minutes after our phone conversation, my .sig was void of any 'useful' information.
The Internet lost some of its charm for me on that day. I don't suppose it actually was any different, but I sure learned to look at it through less-rosy glasses. :/
-matt
Ugh. What a nasty experience. Unfortunately, the otherwise beautiful city that I live in, Portland, OR, also has the dubious distinction of being the whitest city in the United States (yes, we even beat Salt Lake City). I was walking down the street the other day wearing a black shirt with Celtic knots on the front and running down one of the sleeves and I was stopped by a guy telling me that he was proud that others were willing to celebrate their European heritage and not be driven underground. While I'm proud of my heritage, the suggestion of white supremecy in the man's conversation just gave me the creeps and I turned and walked away without saying anything else.
Disclaimer: Being proud of my heritage does not mean that I am proud of everything that my ancestors have done. In fact, much of it is disgraceful, but I think I'll stop there as it's so easy to misunderstand conversation about this topic.
Incidentally, it's not a coincidence that Portland is so white. Oregon used to work very hard to keep non-whites out of the state. We joined the union as an anti-slavery state in part because we thought that allowing slaves meant we had to allow black people. Further, we used to have the second largest Chinese population outside of San Francisco, but we drove them out, often at gunpoint.
For an interesting read about our history, check out the story of Jacob Vanderpool (side note: I've held and read the original court documents, so I know this is a true story). He's the only person known to be forced out of Oregon, by the courts, because of his race. I wanted to write a screenplay about him but I couldn't find out where he came from or where he went. What's interesting about him is that he appeared to be rich, which was very unusual for a black person. I visited our historical society to try and track down more information but never got anywhere.
