A Nation of Voyeurs

[robertclough]

Source: boston.com

http://www.boston.com/globe/magazine/2003/0202/coverstory.htm

Snippet:
How the Internet search engine Google is changing what we can find out about one another - and raising questions about whether we should.

[Advisor]

A riveting article!

I'm on page 3 and can't wait to read the rest...

[scottiecl]

Actually, somewhat chilling!

I am very careful about giving out personal information and yet when I did a search I quickly found about 8 references to my name- a Chamber of Commerce listing, some press releases, the article I wrote for Jill's newsletter and my Go Guides editor profile.

Very creepy! If someone wanted to find me, they would have no trouble doing it. That article makes you stop and think...

[scottiecl]

A search for "Marshall Drew" turns up the "Is this Spam" thread and shows my signature file as the description. 17th result.

I added this signature last Thursday...today is Monday...

[Advisor]

Yep, they're fast!

[Dan0]

Wow, hadn't Googled myself in a while. Looks like all those old Usenet debates on AI, neural nets and all that have been pushed way down the list. Whew!

And another reason to be cheesed at GoGuides: publishing my email address.

[scottiecl]

I am not at all happy about GoGuides allowing indexing of editor profiles...not cool :(

[french dread]

Yes it is very easy to make a profile of someone who is very active on the net if u know his name, nick or email.
Do american law protect the right to privacy so that we can ask google to mask our names or emails from usenet archives?

[robwatts]

I guess it is a good reason why you should use aliases and throwaway email addresses when you post in usenet or other public forums.

On a positive note, I found it quite handy only two days ago, when I needed evidence to back up some suspicions i had about a company who were taking liberties.

[Kal]

Whoa. I hadn't vanity Googled in ages and it was a bit of a hair-raiser. The first 100 or so links are to my articles which is cool. Thanks for posting that article Rob :). I've linked to it in my blog.

[Dan0]

I'm going to quit GoGuides. There is no excuse for putting our name and email out there like that.