By Peter Bell

Stalker-dot-com

Posted At : February 20, 2009 2:03 PM | Posted By : Peter Bell
Related Categories: Privacy, Misc
I'm pretty much of the perspective that privacy (at least for the digerati) was effectively abolished about five years ago and I'm cool with that. I assume there's nothing I do that won't be published and attributed to me, but while doing a quick Google on a new date (hey, what can I say, I had a computer, a full name and needed an excuse to blow off work for five minutes) I came across a search engine that actually made me a little uncomfortable with the quantity and quality of information provided . . .

[More]

Comments (6) | del.icio.us | Linking Blogs
Comments
[Add Comment]
I tweeted about this a couple of weeks ago after reading the techcrunch article and had similar thoughts to you. Obviously this is all public information anyway but the very act of gathering it all together in an easy to search format could easily be abused. Granted it also found some people I had been curious to find who I had never found before. Now I am headed there to learn Peter Bell's deep dark secrets!!!
# Posted By Brian Rinaldi | 2/20/09 2:44 PM
This one is quite scary also http://www.yasni.com/
# Posted By Roy | 2/20/09 4:06 PM
Hi Peter, luckily my name is rather 13 in a dozen as we say in the Netherlands, so I find a lot about fellow namebearers, but (almost) nothing about myself. So I'm safe for now ;-)
# Posted By Sebastiaan | 2/21/09 6:07 AM
It's a crazy, open source world of webbing information ~ personal or not!

Recruiters and headhunters are busy leveraging this technology for their industry and clients. Jobs and livelihoods are at stake. It pretty much changes the meaning of a background check. yikes!
# Posted By Karen Lynn | 2/22/09 4:00 PM
"Aw shucks, Peter - you really know how to make a girl feel special"

;-)
# Posted By richard | 2/27/09 4:40 AM
It's all very well having a search engine, but if it doesnt return the correct information it's downright dangerous, and can do serious damage.

I did what a lot of people will do- searched for myself. I found that according to pipl.com there is no Mike Kear living in Windsor, NSW, Australia (which is where i have lived since 1982 and have had 'Windsor, Australia' in every sig on every forum i've been on since 1993). Also, according to pipl.com, I have 4 facebook profiles (i've never even logged on to facebook) There are photos of me - a female doctor, a dead 18yo soccer player, a photographer of drag queens in some place called Vauxhallville (wherever that is) and according to the photos of "me" it found, i have several teenage girlfriends. This will be shocking news to my wife of 34 years!
I am also apparently a grandfather and Baptist preacher (which will also be something of a revelation to my two sons!)

Even though my real photo has been on my web site for a few years, and i have several other photos of myself on other websites, pipl.com was unable to find any of them.

The only real facts about me it was able to find was a few posts to forums i've been on for more than a decade.

Most disturbing was some posts by one of these mystery Mike Kear's to a Usenet usegroup that deals with incest and pederasty. If potential recruiters are using this service to background my job applications they could well find these posts and cross me off the shortlist as an undesirable.

As i said .... an index can be a very useful thing. But a bad index is worse than no index at all.
# Posted By Mike Kear | 5/17/09 6:44 PM
[Add Comment]
BlogCFC was created by Raymond Camden. This blog is running version 5.005.