Online Privacy

As people spend more of their time online and as search engines try to store more content and provide more accurate ways of searching, our online lives and thus our actual lives, are becoming increasingly exposed.

As I store people's contact information on my website, I often run into people who, after publishing their information online, develop a new need for privacy and want it taken down ASAP. Sometimes people send me nasty first-emails (eg the initial request to take it down is nasty, they don't even wait a couple days for me to take action) which is probably indicative of how important privacy is. I respond to the requests, but there is only so much I can do.

Google
Other search engines are important as well, but Google is still far in the lead. So long as a person has a semi-original name (ex. Aaron Kreider), you can google them. The key is to put the name in quotations to get an exact match: "Aaron Kreider". You might also try: Aaron Kreider (without quotations) as sometimes a name will appear out of order (Ex. Kreider, Aaron.).

If you want images of Aaron Kreider you can try the Google Images search (though you run into another person, not me).

Google's Cache
Now not only are you possibly all over Google, but once in Google it is hard to get out. I've seen pages from my website stored in the Google cache for over two years AFTER the page no longer existed. They should shorten the cache period to several months.

Getting Out of Google
Google has a URL removal tool, but I believe that you need to be in control of the website where the content appears to get it to work. If your information is being posted on someone else's website, you can appeal to them to get it taken down and then wait for two years for Google to remove it from the cache. Good luck.

Archive.org
They archive the internet which means that your information from 1996 might still be online. Fortunately they only store a small number of pages from each site, so your personal info is unlikely to appear. Also their search function only lets you search for web pages - you cannot search for a person unless you know what page they will be on.

LiveJournal
Several million people use this and other journal sites. The danger is that anyone can use google:
site: www.livejournal.com "aaron kreider"
And despite the fact that I don't use livejournal, I still show up!

Flickr
Another place for images of people is flickr. Though generally people don't tag last-names, either out of laziness, a sense of informality (just putting up pictures of their friends) or out of an actual awareness of privacy. You might want to try their name with and without a space - Ex. Aaron Kreider and AaronKreider. Though I'm not listed.

If you think flickr is scary, there is an upstart image hosting service that uses face recognition to try and find people! (www.riya.com)

Usernames
People understand that using the same password on multiple sites is a security rish, though many still do it. The other side of this is having the same username for different websites - and it can be a major privacy problem. It is convenient, and that is why systems like the Drupal Shared login (which lets you use the same username to log in to any drupal website that has the shared login turned on) actually encourage it.

However, if you use the same username - you have just given away a key to unlock your online presence. People can now Google your username and find out about you. Try googling: akreider

A username might appear be part of your email address, on a forum, on myspace, friendster, livejournal, a blog, or many other locations.

Phone Numbers/Email Addresses
You can search for someone's phone number or email address. I list email addresses on my website using javascript - which means they won't appear in google.

Commercial People Finder Websites
Yahoo has one - http://people.yahoo.com/ - doesn't know about me.
Zoominfo.com - they know about me.
There are even scarier ones if you are willing to pay money to look people up. I'm not willing, so I don't know how effective they are.