(b) setting posts to private has the same effect on the reader as deleting them.
Nope, it doesn't. (And I've voted in favor of your suggestion, so just trying to make a point here.) But the former results in a "You do not have permission to view this" message while the latter simply 404s. It's a small distinction, but if your stalker wants to know where that now missing post from last week that's all about him is, and he sees "You do not have permission" on it he thinks to himself, "Aha! it's still there! I just can't see it anymore, but maybe this person's friends still can." This could, as an example, lead to him being able to start some sort of action against you with DW or even with the courts. On the other hand, if he visits the page and gets a 404, then it's gone, so there's nothing for him to get frothy over (or at least not as much for him to get frothy over, though I'd imagine he could still bitch about any search engine caches that are still available on it or whatever).
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Nope, it doesn't. (And I've voted in favor of your suggestion, so just trying to make a point here.) But the former results in a "You do not have permission to view this" message while the latter simply 404s. It's a small distinction, but if your stalker wants to know where that now missing post from last week that's all about him is, and he sees "You do not have permission" on it he thinks to himself, "Aha! it's still there! I just can't see it anymore, but maybe this person's friends still can." This could, as an example, lead to him being able to start some sort of action against you with DW or even with the courts. On the other hand, if he visits the page and gets a 404, then it's gone, so there's nothing for him to get frothy over (or at least not as much for him to get frothy over, though I'd imagine he could still bitch about any search engine caches that are still available on it or whatever).