What do y'all think about "people search" tech?

[Totenkindly]

After doing a scan on yahoo of our favorite "relational guru" Adam007 (and finding more than I think he would have ever expected), I decided to do a scan on the userid I've settled on outside this forum (i.e., my handle on pretty much any other sites I'm going to).

I had originally wanted a unique handle, so that people didn't confuse me with someone else.

So when I googled it, I guess I got what I asked for: Page after page of all the sites I've been posting on... MBTI sites, trans-support sites, Yahoo Answers, WordPress, etc. Plus any site that my posts were getting piped to (e.g., some sites run Yahoo Answers feeds, and things I wrote 18 months ago were showing up on these other sites!)

Wow.

I'm a little amazed... and a little creeped out.

I know it's not "new" news, but what do y'all think about this and its implications for people, culture, etc?

 

[Randomnity]

Huh. I thought mine was fairly unique, I made it up on the spot and everything, but after googling it, I'm clearly very unoriginal.

Thanks a lot for bringing my attention to this.

 

[The Ü™]

So you just Googled the words "Adam007"? I did and I saw an Adam007 at a bunch of movie profiles, but I was looking at posts and they were movie-related. Are you sure it was the same one?

What, specifically, did you type in? I wanna see this for myself!

 

[Totenkindly]

Try this search.

Then try this one. (is that you on OKCupid?)

 

[proteanmix]

I scroogled Adam007, Gary007, and Jason007 and got much the same results. I only pop up here, INTPc, and MBTINebulous. I try to move with stealth across the internet.

Anyway, I google people and I don't feel bad for it. I don't care if someone googles me because I'm careful about what I write on the internet and if anything will come back to haunt me. I told you, strangers in grocery stores are the best people to reveal your secrets to.

 

[Falcarius]

To be honest I don't really care.

This, this, and this is not even me.

It did give me a cool link to this. It also give a link to my profile on the veggie boards, intjforum, and myspace.

 

[The Ü™]

I scroogled Adam007, Gary007, and Jason007 and got much the same results. I only pop up here, INTPc, and MBTINebulous. I try to move with stealth across the internet.

What about Raincrow007?

 

[Totenkindly]

... I told you, strangers in grocery stores are the best people to reveal your secrets to.

Yup... because the checkout line clears out REALLY fast...

 

[mippus]

It scares me, especially since the net's memory is limitless...

 

[Colors]

It doesn't really scare me. As long as you're not ashamed of yourself, right?

For anonymity reasons, I do choose to use more than one username on the internet- it keeps my various interests separate and helps me control who knows what about me. Of course, "Colors" is too general to really get anything (278 million results!).

And it's totally amusing to google yourself! Though it does seem random what turns up #1, especially since it changes over time.

 

[scantilyclad]

a lot of people seem to share my screen name. I mostly found a lot of porn related stuff though. hmmm. The only places that i found the actual me was here, infp globalchatter and INTP central.

 

[miss fortune]

the joys of having such a bland username I didn't find myself at all- even after 20 pages!

though it was thoroughly depressing to type in my real name and only get past work I did on the board of an academic journal (yes- the person who can't spell was queen bitch of the staff! ) and high school cross country results Almost all of the results were place names I'm so unimportant! (ok- and some rosters for different organizations and such, but still BORING! )

Edit: on another note- did anyone else notice that Adam007's race and age changed from place to place, but his bad spelling/gramar and interest in love stayed the same?

 

[Atomic Fiend]

I got a few links to INTPc, here, and a porn site... which was weird.

 

[nightning]

I just take it as something that's just "there". Whether you like it or hate it, it's there to stay... so why not just learn to use it to your advantage? I use the same user handle for pretty much everything. I guess it's something I don't mind... having people search my user name. The places I visited are confidential in anyway... mostly useless info that people are unlikely to care about.

Interesting... searching my name links me to my site and a lot of torrent download links for some template thing. Some sort of forum skin?