It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

The Story of How I Trusted a Robot and Accidentally Doxxed Myself

I have had a week!

Some of you may remember that my last little blog update was centred around what I thought was some rather exciting news. After years of managing my business income through my personal account, I had finally put on my Big Girl Businesswoman Pants™ and registered a proper business name.

TJT Enterprises.

Very grown-up.

Very professional.

Very organised.

I was terribly pleased with myself.

The entire reason for doing this was actually quite boring: I wanted a proper business bank account so I could offer PayID as another option for deposits without having my legal name pop up on your screen. More payment options for you. Better separation between Jasmine and my private finances for me. Everybody wins.

So, naturally, I immediately wrote a blog telling you all about my exciting little administrative achievement. Look at me! I'm a Business Lady now!

And then a couple of very kind, very thoughtful gentlemen contacted me.

Essentially:

Um... Jasmine? You might want to take that down.

Oh.

Oh no.

Ohhhhhhh no.

It turned out that my shiny new business name could be searched on a public government register. And if you knew where to look and clicked through far enough, there I was.

Not Jasmine.

Me.

My full legal name.

And, even more horrifyingly...

My home address.

My actual home.

Where I live.

Where my family lives.

I cannot adequately describe the sensation of discovering that you have essentially doxxed yourself. There are mistakes, and then there are spectacularly efficient acts of self-sabotage.

Naturally, I panicked. I deleted the blog as quickly as my little fingers could manage and checked the view count.

Thirty.

Thirty people had seen it.

Honestly? That could have been so much worse. Thirty is hardly viral. But when your brain has entered full catastrophe mode, it helpfully reminds you that you don't need thirty stalkers. You only need one.

And suddenly I felt incredibly exposed.

Unsafe.

Embarrassed.

And perhaps worst of all, there wasn't even anybody else I could blame. I'd done it to myself. I started frantically investigating how to undo it.

Could I hide the business name from the register?

Not immediately.

Could I just cancel the bloody thing?

Sure!

...except cancellation could take about a month to process, and it wouldn't magically make the historical record disappear anyway.

Excellent.

Wonderful.

Love that for me.

For a little while there, I genuinely felt as though I had completely screwed myself over. And now, because apparently public humiliation is good for the soul, let me tell you how I managed to get myself into this situation in the first place.

In Artificial Intelligence We Trust

You know how I'm forever banging on about spreadsheets, statistics and technology making my life easier?

Well.

Perhaps I became a little too trusting.

When I decided I wanted PayID, I had one very specific requirement: I didn't want a gentleman typing my PayID into his banking app and being greeted with my full legal name. So I did what any technologically sophisticated modern woman would do.

I asked ChatGPT.

We went through a crash course on business bank accounts, sole trader structures, PayID, ABNs, and registered business names. Navigating the business world still feels incredibly foreign to me, so I asked every question I could think of. I even specifically asked whether registering a business name would mean people could find my personal details. I was reassured that they couldn't.

So off I trotted and registered TJT Enterprises.

What neither my beloved artificial adviser nor its apparently insufficiently paranoid human operator had properly accounted for was the breadcrumb trail created by a public business register.

The business name itself wasn't exactly a giant neon sign saying: JASMINE AMOUR'S REAL NAME AND HOME ADDRESS — CLICK HERE!

But there was enough publicly available information to follow the trail. And a couple of you did.

Thankfully, not because you had sinister intentions. You did it because you recognised the security problem and cared enough to warn me. Which I am enormously grateful for.

But still.

Mortifying.

So, ChatGPT and I are currently going through a difficult patch in our relationship. Trust has been damaged. There may need to be counselling. And somewhere, deep inside a server farm, I like to imagine a tiny robot sitting in the naughty corner contemplating what he has done. He did say sorry, though.

To which I petulantly replied, "Don’t be sorry. Be better."

Welcome to Bureaucratic Hell

What followed was approximately 48 hours of me attempting to navigate Australian government bureaucracy while growing increasingly frazzled.

There were forms.

There were phone calls.

There was a statutory declaration.

There was an application that, in the year 2026, could not simply be submitted digitally and instead needed to be printed, signed and sent through actual snail mail.

At one point I stared at the instructions wondering whether perhaps they would also like me to seal it with wax and dispatch it by carrier pigeon.

And then there was the sitting on hold.

So.

Much.

Sitting.

On.

Hold.

All so I could eventually explain the situation to an actual human being. That part made me particularly anxious. Because to explain why that information being public posed such a safety risk, I first had to explain what my business actually is.

And despite everything I write here, despite how confidently I talk about my work with all of you, there are still situations where saying it to a stranger makes me brace myself for the reaction.

I worried I would be judged.

Dismissed.

That they might think I was being dramatic.

That they'd think feeling unsafe was simply the price I had to pay for choosing this work.

Instead, I encountered kindness.

People listened.

They understood why I was frightened.

They helped.

And finally...

Success!

As of today, the identifying details connected to TJT Enterprises have been suppressed from the public Business Names Register to protect my privacy and safety.

My legal name is hidden.

My private address is hidden.

My ABN is hidden.

And I cannot begin to tell you how much lighter I felt when I checked that register and realised the trail finally ended where it should. With Jasmine.

An Irony Worthy of an Alanis Morissette Song

The irony of this entire saga is absolutely not lost on me.

Do you remember why I started all of this? Because I didn't want to use PayID through my personal bank account... because I didn't want clients seeing my legal name.

So, in an elaborate attempt to prevent you all from discovering my legal name, I registered a business name and accidentally created a pathway that could reveal both my name and my home address.

Outstanding work, Jasmine.

No notes.

And do you know what else I'd been nervous about?

Opening the business bank account in person.

I had built the whole thing up in my head because I was worried I'd have to explain what I do to a bank teller and they might judge me.

After all that anxiety, the woman who helped me was absolutely lovely. Kind. Professional. Discreet. Completely unfazed.

Apparently the scariest person involved in this entire administrative process... was me.

Oh, And Because That Apparently Wasn't Enough...

While all of that was unfolding, life decided the week wasn't quite dramatic enough. There was also a medical emergency involving my partner. He is now having emergency surgery. So that lovely little holiday I've been excitedly counting down to, the one that was supposed to happen in two weeks, has officially been postponed.

At this stage, I feel like the universe has looked at my diary, seen a suspicious amount of relaxation scheduled for late August, and said:

Absolutely not.

The good news is that the holiday isn't cancelled entirely. We've just pushed it back to late October.

But between emergency surgery, accidentally publishing a treasure map to my private identity, government forms, statutory declarations, hours on the phone, banking appointments and the general existential horror of realising that sometimes I am, in fact, the architect of my own problems... You could say it's been a VERY stressful week.

Thankfully, things are finally beginning to fall back into place.

Making Lemonade

Since I will now be staying on home soil rather than disappearing on holiday, I suddenly have a few extra dates available that weren't previously in my diary:

Saturday 29th August (daytime)

Wednesday 2nd September (daytime)

Saturday 5th September (daytime)

If you already have a booking locked in for early September and would prefer to bring it forward to one of those dates, please reach out. I'm very happy to shuffle things around where I can. I do suspect the Saturday spots will be snapped up in a jiffy.

And after causing this much chaos in pursuit of one very simple payment method, I am delighted (and perhaps slightly traumatised) to announce:

PayID will finally be available from next week.

It had better be bloody worth it!

Thank you for reading through what has essentially become one very long venting session. Strangely, putting fingertips to keyboard and sorting through the mess in my head has been rather therapeutic. And hey, if nothing else, at least this whole disaster makes for excellent blog fodder.

Now that the threat is extinguished, you'll find my previous blog republished just below this one. Please enjoy it with the benefit of hindsight, and have a little giggle at Past Jasmine feeling terribly pleased with herself for being such a competent grown-up businesswoman. Little did she know she'd be panic-deleting that very post shortly afterwards, Big Girl Businesswoman Pants™ firmly around her ankles.

Now that I've confessed my spectacular administrative incompetence to all of you, I think I've earned the right to disappear into a very hot bubble bath and pretend for at least an hour that government registers, bank accounts and statutory declarations do not exist. If anyone needs me, I'll be under the bubbles.

Love, a slightly frazzled,

Jasmine x