Without a trace?
Google is currently the number 1 search engine on this planet. 80 % are using it and I’m among them. I recently also found out that you can actually become a fortune-teller and scare people with Google.
At work we had a trainee for about three months and I knew very little about her, not much beyond her basics, her phone number, her private Email address and that we where into the same movies. She had a kind of a fancy email-id and I typed it into Google. And to my surprise I found some very interesting details. She not only used that unique pseudonym for her email address, but also in various discussion boards. And guess what – Google searches all the discussion boards and even stores them on their own servers, which means that, if the original source (website) gets deleted, it still can be read with a little help from Google.
For example, this young lady was posting in an online forum about a painful breakup half a year ago. All postings are deleted after three weeks, but I was able to read the full article, six months later! In another forum she was posting about her problems with cellulites (actually, I know she has taken care of that ;-)), again, long gone at the original source, but still viewable by Google users like me! I found more then a dozen entries, sometimes revealing very personal information.
The next time I met her, I showed her all the search results about her. She was completely shocked. Actually she blushed when she discovered the cellulites entry ;-). But the point is that she made very personal information about herself viewable to everyone who simply knew her email-address. My advice to her was to either stop writing about personal stuff she does not want everyone to know or use different identities in every discussion forum she posts. That way its almost impossible to search Google for certain pseudonyms. To use a search engine like Google or Yahoo is something everyone can do! It’s easy and takes about 5 seconds.
Bottom line: She was a bit mad at me for searching Google, so now she is seeking revenge. And she already found 700 entries at Google about me…
But I am sure I never posted anything about my problems with Cellulites!
At work we had a trainee for about three months and I knew very little about her, not much beyond her basics, her phone number, her private Email address and that we where into the same movies. She had a kind of a fancy email-id and I typed it into Google. And to my surprise I found some very interesting details. She not only used that unique pseudonym for her email address, but also in various discussion boards. And guess what – Google searches all the discussion boards and even stores them on their own servers, which means that, if the original source (website) gets deleted, it still can be read with a little help from Google.
For example, this young lady was posting in an online forum about a painful breakup half a year ago. All postings are deleted after three weeks, but I was able to read the full article, six months later! In another forum she was posting about her problems with cellulites (actually, I know she has taken care of that ;-)), again, long gone at the original source, but still viewable by Google users like me! I found more then a dozen entries, sometimes revealing very personal information.
The next time I met her, I showed her all the search results about her. She was completely shocked. Actually she blushed when she discovered the cellulites entry ;-). But the point is that she made very personal information about herself viewable to everyone who simply knew her email-address. My advice to her was to either stop writing about personal stuff she does not want everyone to know or use different identities in every discussion forum she posts. That way its almost impossible to search Google for certain pseudonyms. To use a search engine like Google or Yahoo is something everyone can do! It’s easy and takes about 5 seconds.
Bottom line: She was a bit mad at me for searching Google, so now she is seeking revenge. And she already found 700 entries at Google about me…
But I am sure I never posted anything about my problems with Cellulites!
posted by giovanniaureel at 10/21/2004
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