The Google Knows

mrG — Thu, 13 Feb 2003 16:33:27 -0500

What evil lurks in the deeds of men? The newly re-ignited Tigers of Wrath sends a link to a semi-chilling Neil Widey article on what the Google knows. Neil wonders if it isn't becoming just a little too convenient to find out the skinny on just about anyone, and cites several case studies among them a young man who seems to blame his prison time for every un-claimed job interview.

Now I do this all the time: Give me an offer from someone, a service they want to sell me, someone who wants to work for me or employ me, my first response is to ask Google, but I tend to find quite the opposite -- maybe it's just bad luck, but instead of deep dark secrets, I find remarkable silence for most anyone I google ... unless they, like me, are long time net-heads who've been quite intentionally (ahem) digitally promiscuous. Yeah, it was also a bit of an embarrasement the day Henry Spencer handed his huge cache of 80's vintage Usenet archives over to Google News, but in general, the only records of me online are directly traceable to my own intentions to put them there.

I discovered something else too: Even those things that I put (or let be put) online which I'd rather I hadn't, they are not so easy to find -- go ahead, see if you can find my dark secret :) -- there's a certain security that comes from having left Google a trail of too much data!

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The Google Knows