Many of you know that “Maria” is not my real name. I choose to go by my saint name because I get paranoid about being searchable on Google. I don’t want people to find out information me unless I want them too. My thoughts will stay my thoughts and will not place an impression on others unless I allow them to know.
With that said, you know it’s very interesting to see how much information you can find out about someone. I recently came across a post that received a lot of attention because of the flame war that broke out in the comments. The short version is that one girl had an opinion about a practice and another woman differed, then called the girl out on it, calling her a “twat” and basically, an idiot (though to some extent, I may agree). I continued to follow the drama because, well, it’s entertaining for me, especially since my life currently has little drama.
Anyway, the girl finally received wind about the woman’s post and decided to write her own, in which she complains that the woman publicly listed the girl’s websites, twitter, etc. To that… I say… really?
Do people not understand the publicness of the internet? The information that the woman posted was information that anyone else could have found had they decided to spend the effort to do so. The internet is public. Once it’s online, it’s pretty much online and in many cases, forever. Somebody somewhere will have the information that was once up for public viewing.
It’s amazing how much you can easily find out about people just by using the internet and knowing a few tools and tricks – all of which are free, by the way. There’s nothing that says you can’t do a search about someone and publicly linking the information that was available anyway.
Did I tell you that I once found out the address of a friend’s ex-boyfriend simply by doing a few clicks? Apparently his phone number was listed too. Though after going through his blog, I realized that he pretty much gave everybody the keys to his apartment anyway when he posted up the Google Map to his apartment… (smart, right?)
Anyway, just food for thought. Be careful about what you post, what you create, and what’s listed about you. Be aware not just for yourself, but for future employers, future stalkers,
Tags: google, public, public information, search
This entry was posted on Sunday, Jun 13, 2010 and is filed under Thoughts.
2 Comments
I think about this a lot. Remember the days when the internet was for anonymity, not for creating a public image of yourself? I miss those days. Usually when I leave comments somewhere, I don’t leave my website URL. I use my real name, but I don’t post a picture on my blog because I figure that my name is common enough that it’s still somewhat anonymous. I like your idea though of using a real-looking name, to create an image and express your opinions, without it necessarily being able to map directly back to you.
So very true. People fail to realize just how public everything is. Sure, maybe we don’t expect people to take our information and run with it, even though we should, because we can be naive. The fact is though that everything we post is publicly available and can be used against us.