(9 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
I highly recommend it. Most revealing is the amount of stuff about you all over the net. This is the first step toward knowing what “they” know about you so you can think about who could/would use it against you.
Net neutrality aside we may be entering that downward slide in the “wonders” of computing. That double edged sword of technology once again. Will it be used to unite or enslave people.
I don’t recall that mighty search engine Google picking up on names in the past. There are actually many people having the same name. This has definitely changed with the advent of the social networking sites. The first thing I found out is that there are lots of me’s out there. I am linkedin,Facebooked, Twittered,Flickered,myspaced even though I have never identified a single personal computer with my real name. Anyway in five minutes and a few pages of Google thyself I found my first Oh Shit.
There is was, my actual real name listed on the A&E911truth membership page. Yup, terrorist for sure. It makes me wonder if all the unemployed people found a new job rectal probing other people. Looking for possible deviant behavior in this “post 911 world”. Credit scores, arrest records, drug rehab stays, traffic tickets, and even perhaps nonPC sequences of words.
Not one of us is God. We make mistakes, say the wrong things plus if you happen to be exceptionally weird in the worldview category as I am getting misconscrewed is a given.
The uglyest of concepts to me is New Songdo City’s internet of things. I am not a thing, have never aspired to be merely a thing, I am a person.
http://www.oldthinkernews.com/…
I shall end that part of that uglyness here and start with that other topic on Orwellianisms on steroids cloud computing. How exactly are they going to sell this mess to people and corporations entrenched in security issues? All of your programs plus data flys around the net for any NSA agent to peruse.
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q…
Oh, and PS. What is the deal with texting? Why elect on purpose a one-way medium deficient in complete communication when you could have instant two-way with voice inflection far more comprehensive exchange in the same time.
With the advent of this technology do you get pissed off at other people when they are not instantly available to you. Come on, admit it.
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for a 40 year old on blood pressure medication……..
http://www.patientprivacyright…
I just denied a life insurance policy on a DNA test of…..
It’s a function of my own vanity, in addition to the purpose you cite above.
My name is pretty unique, and I’m not anonymous, so I’ve been doomed from the start.
there are about 4,900 hits for my full name. I only looked at the first few pages. If anyone cared, s/he could find out a lot about what I think.
1 – 10 of about 5,370,000 for thyself 😉
…. what is more disconcerting, to me, is when I am researching a topic regarding local political machines here in CA, and my screen name is one of the top hits on ‘teh Google.’
I know I’m on more than one “list” after the stunt one of the right wing groups pulled to get my home address, plus I’ve been photographed with my vehicle more than once, not only by my congressman’s little Russian mafia goon friends but by the various Feds for picketing Dick Cheney and Doolittle appearances or just blogging them. Shrug.
Yes, not being in a perpetual state of oil wars, using alternative energy, and not being an effing third world country re medical care is highly subversive stuff here in Amerikuh.
except a bunch of booze recipes and when I google my real name apparently I’m a Finnish Opera singer.
“hyperbolic+bloviator” and not only did my name come up but also my picture! Huh…go figure. Good essay, LH.
As more and more web sites are built according to (very reasonable) web programming standards, more and more of them will show up on search engines-until the search engines alter their algorithms.
As an example, look at the URL for this very diary:
docudharma.com/diary/19260/google-thyselfhttps://www.docudharma.com/diary/19260/google-thyself
See how the title is actually in the URL? That’s instant lift right there. If the title is coded in an h1 tag-or rather if the site’s management system automatically makes titles into h1 tags (maybe ek or another admin could enlighten us here)-that increases the likelihood that searches for the terms in that title will return the page in the first bunch of results.
Also, Google made a decision to “value” results from social media sites over other results, because that’s where people are-those are the high traffic sites.
Every once in a while I get to feel like I know what I’m talking about. 🙂
were me.. none that I could find, anyway, by maiden name or married name.
Although “psycho bitch from hell” had a few hits for me.
🙂