Anonimity vs Google

[GrowinVeggiesInSC]

I was going to suggest removing your real name from your profile, but I can see you've already done that. That should fix it, I think. Have you tried googling since then?

I had a job for many years where I was interviewed on the local TV news a bit and I've been in the local newspaper a bunch, too. I'm also on Facebook, so much for anonymity! I keep all my "stuff" appropriate so if people look me up, they don't find naked, drunk pictures of me all over the 'net.

 

[Reinbeau]

Which begs the question - are there naked, drunk photos of you somewhere? I'm sorry, I couldn't resist.....

I am on Facebook also. I am careful, to a point, what I post there, things can and will come back to haunt you!

 

[FarmerDenise]

I agree, you have to be quite carefull. And no, as far as I know there are no naked, drunk pictures of me any where. Unless they were taken when I was drunk...and naked and I don't remember
But there might be one of me smoking a ...never mind. That's not me. That was that olympic swimmer....
jeeesh, one does have to be carefull.
BTW, I just googled my name again, and it still comes up in association with TheEasyGarden - profile.
So no-one elses' name comes up like that?

 

[Texan]

I never ever even put my name on one of these forums. Bad bad bad. I know none of you (I hope not anyway) are predators but I takey no chancey

 

[wifezilla]

I don't give a hoot about anonymity, I've been on the net for so long I know there's no such thing.

Yeah, no kidding.

 

[Nifty]

A good thread and discussion. A few comments:

1) Never post anything online that you don't eventually want traced back to you. Many times people think they are more anonymous than they really are.

2) Spiders and crawlers and bots... OH MY: The internet is FULL of automated systems that are scouring the net and grabbing / associating data (names, posts, info, etc.) Actually, we want these systems to grab the info from our sites and organize / index it. That's what makes the internet great and allows people to find information and our sites.

3) The only way a person's name would be associated with their username on the forum is if they posted it and made it available. Not posting / removing your name will help, but if the crawlers grabbed the info, it may be hard to get them to remove the associations. Sometimes it takes months or even years for indexed pages / info to be updated.

4) Even if you delete stuff from the internet, it may never go away. Check out the internet archive and look up some of your favorite sites and you'll see what I mean: http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

So, in a nutshell: On this site the only info that Google will have is what you post, so be careful what you write.

 

[FarmerDenise]

Good points, Nifty.
Fortunately I am carefull about what I post, generally speaking, that goes for other sites as well. I've let this be a lesson to myself to be even more cautious.
A nice fake name or two won't hurt for future ventures into the internet world. Some sites seem to insist on a name.