Private information about me is on the Internet: Should I care?
I was engaged in a Yahoo message board discussion about the need to secure an individual's personal information -- when, as is often the case, a message thread participant took a detour. "This is a mute discussion," he wrote "because anyone can find anything about you on the Internet." I don't believe in absolutes, and am fairly sure that you'll not find the name of my first Barbie doll on the Internet -- whoops ... My inadvertent admission that I wasn't a particularly innovative child proves that I self-publish much of what appears about me.
Because I'm an IT industry analyst, quality Google hits equal industry clout. For example, I've been quoted by the press, my name appears in vendor press releases, I blog and comment on blog posts. However, my name also gets Googlized because I'm a social media junkie and social community subscribe-aholic. With each subscription, another profile about me is added to my Internet stockpile. Have all these profiles watered-down my quality hits?
Do I get more spam than the "average" person? I think so. My email address is all over the place. But that is the price of media coverage and having my own business. Some folk publish their email address using the syntax maurene.grey [at] grey-consulting [dot] com, so as to trick the bots roaming the Internet to harvest email addresses. However, try to subscribe to a Web service using that syntax -- ain't gonna work. Wha la! Them bots gotcha. So, get a good spam filter, don't open blatantly spam email and don't use your email reader's preview screen.
My message board colleagues said that in addition to my email address, my phone number is out there. True enough. But, gosh, I want my business contact information out there.
Insofar as releasing very private information, I'm more concerned with sites like freeality.com, which is a list of directory sites. The sites state that they do not release information that isn't already publicly available. Do a search on your name and see what is returned. Most of the sites include increasingly in-depth levels of for-fee searches. Here's a sample report from Intelius.
I've found that some services use pop-up windows to gather information in a sneaky way. For example, most people will do a search on their own name and naively will complete all of the fields in the search form. An unethical service will grab the information that is provided and may even thank you for updating their records. Therefore when searching your name, provide the least amount of required information -- normally, a first or last name and possibly an age range or city/state in the U.S. If you feel uncomfortable with the amount of information that the service requests, take heed.
Did you know that your home phone number is freely available through a number of "reverse phone lookup" services. Do a regular Google search on your home phone number. Wha la! Look at all the services that have your number. You can ask that your entry be removed by contacting each of the "reverse phone lookup" service providers. (If you know of a "one-stop shopping" clearinghouse, let me know.)
Some information is of public record. However, other information people either naively, or during a period of poor judgment, self-publish.
As for me, I don't like surprises. So, I'm going to find out what others can find out about me.