7:36AM
« Your Ever Shrinking Digital Privacy »
Wednesday, September 5, 2007 at 07:36AM
This morning, Facebook announces that your profile will be findable in search engines in a month, giving you time to batten down the hatches before the hordes descend on you. So long to funny and inappropriate Facebook profile photos, now that your boss and your future bosses can search to see if you've got an inappropriate dark streak hiding in your closet. Of course, you can choose to completely lock down your profile, but even the shyest of us wants to be found by someone.
This is just another cog in the machinery destined to make you more visible on the internet. Rapleaf, a people finder, is able to aggregate a goodly chunk of social networking content to put together a digital reputation of you.
Meanwhile, just yesterday, wikiHow had an article on "How to UnGoogle Yourself". ZDNet's Stephanie Olsen has a compelling article on the dangerous side effects of these personal information aggregators.
The race is on, with folks trying to wipe their dirty digital feet before the footprints become tracked all over the public internet.
All this being said - I tried Rapleaf, and it didn't find any information on me, but I haven't given up. These tools could also be used to help clean up the annoying bits of digital dandruff you leave on the internet. I un-googled myself yesterday, and managed to kill off 3 instances of myself that I had forgotten about. Perhaps someday, there will be just one me again, the analog one.
I cannot say it enough: "Know where you are, and act accordingly. The line between digital and analog has almost disappeared. There is no more anonymity on the internet".
This is just another cog in the machinery destined to make you more visible on the internet. Rapleaf, a people finder, is able to aggregate a goodly chunk of social networking content to put together a digital reputation of you.
Meanwhile, just yesterday, wikiHow had an article on "How to UnGoogle Yourself". ZDNet's Stephanie Olsen has a compelling article on the dangerous side effects of these personal information aggregators.
The race is on, with folks trying to wipe their dirty digital feet before the footprints become tracked all over the public internet.
All this being said - I tried Rapleaf, and it didn't find any information on me, but I haven't given up. These tools could also be used to help clean up the annoying bits of digital dandruff you leave on the internet. I un-googled myself yesterday, and managed to kill off 3 instances of myself that I had forgotten about. Perhaps someday, there will be just one me again, the analog one.
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