Life in the Public Eye
The Internet- love it or hate it- will be around for a loooong time.
Just out of curiosity I googled my name today and a list of accurate search results came out (that IS the point of a search engine, is it not?). A person doing the search would know where I work, my timetable, my college activities and my office e-mail. It even offered a link to my facebook account (oh noooooo!).
When I googled hubby's name, not as many search results were obtained- only 2 pages instead of more than 10 for mine (does this mean that I'm more popular? :p)- but it gave quite an extensive picture of his activities since Uni, his previous job, an alumni association he joined and the activities they did. One of the pages even contained his IC number (what about data protection, PEOPLE?).
Hubby started making an appearance as early as 1997 as a member of the engineering faculty at his Uni, as opposed to my emergence on the Net only after I started teaching.
Is nothing private anymore?
Am I overreacting or is this a real cause for concern?
Let's just deliberate this for a while. Out of 6 billion plus people on this planet, how many will be looking for me? None, perhaps (but it takes just 1 person with an evil thought...). Besides, to search a name on the Internet one has to know my full name (but my business cards have been widely circulated...!). However, do remember that I am rather unknown (I hope) and uninteresting (without a doubt) so I would not be the first person on most people's mind to be destroyed... and I have no vested interest in anything of significance for people to carry out a smear campaign against. One good thing though, this widespread online presence will make the name owner think twice about doing anything bad, because everyone would know about it (eventually).
Hope you've enjoyed my schizoprenic presentation today. Thank you for reading.
Just out of curiosity I googled my name today and a list of accurate search results came out (that IS the point of a search engine, is it not?). A person doing the search would know where I work, my timetable, my college activities and my office e-mail. It even offered a link to my facebook account (oh noooooo!).
When I googled hubby's name, not as many search results were obtained- only 2 pages instead of more than 10 for mine (does this mean that I'm more popular? :p)- but it gave quite an extensive picture of his activities since Uni, his previous job, an alumni association he joined and the activities they did. One of the pages even contained his IC number (what about data protection, PEOPLE?).
Hubby started making an appearance as early as 1997 as a member of the engineering faculty at his Uni, as opposed to my emergence on the Net only after I started teaching.
Is nothing private anymore?
Am I overreacting or is this a real cause for concern?
Let's just deliberate this for a while. Out of 6 billion plus people on this planet, how many will be looking for me? None, perhaps (but it takes just 1 person with an evil thought...). Besides, to search a name on the Internet one has to know my full name (but my business cards have been widely circulated...!). However, do remember that I am rather unknown (I hope) and uninteresting (without a doubt) so I would not be the first person on most people's mind to be destroyed... and I have no vested interest in anything of significance for people to carry out a smear campaign against. One good thing though, this widespread online presence will make the name owner think twice about doing anything bad, because everyone would know about it (eventually).
Hope you've enjoyed my schizoprenic presentation today. Thank you for reading.
posted by elya at 1:41 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home