Why is my data everywhere?

English Open Chat
1

I browsed a little for fun for my own name through Google and was surprised to see my name with information on sites like ‘reunion.com’, ‘GetClue’ or ‘Radaris’.
How did my information get there? Did i gave these sites permission by signing up somewhere. I do not remember anything like that.

I really would like to know so i can stop the spread of my information around. It is really strange.

2

I suppose those sites use crawlerbots. You used to have a Facebook-account. :slight_smile:

3

I didn’t want to say this, but i think you are right. Privacy is not a big value. It is, however, very funny that i even see old message from newsgroups ages ago written, on web forums where i never was registered. There is, perhaps, also a bot that gathered information. Nothing of value really.

Btw. never went to Berlin but i am from Frankfurt/M. Cheers. :slight_smile:

4

Forums, mailing lists and newsgroups are archived, sometimes in many places. Archive.org has snapshots of the Web going back 15 years or so. There are companies that claim to remove all traces of you from the Internet for a fee, but I’m skeptical of this.

5

It reminds me. There are information which i did not share with Facebook or anywhere. I point to my last residence. For some reason i think more of credit cards.

6

Spiders crawl the net constantly harvesting data from all kinds of sources.

It’s funny a search for my actual name shows almost nothing.

7

yester64 wrote:
> It reminds me. There are information which i did not share with Facebook
> or anywhere. I point to my last residence. For some reason i think more
> of credit cards.

information about you is not limited to the internet…like, “your
last residence” for example: did you have newspapers, magazines,
water, electricity, cable-TV, phone service, tax documents,
bank/credit card statements, or etc “delivered” to that site in your name?

many, let me repeat that, MANY companies and services ‘share’
information such as who lives where…

heck, for many many years one of those service companies routinely
updated and PRINTED copies of such, and delivered long lists of info
to every home and office in the region…they were (and probably still
are) called a “telephone book”…

and, anything found in any telephone book is easily moved into digital
form (by third world typist making a dollar a day) and then SOLD to
sites like ‘reunion.com’, ‘GetClue’, ‘Radaris’ and many others…

–
DenverD
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD [posted via NNTP w/openSUSE 10.3]
When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.

8

i always found looking up my name amusing on the net i wont get anything connected to me because someone else of the same name that is also working in the video and post production field that is more known gets all the hits.

9

I don’t have a very common name, but there are about a dozen others sharing it based on a google search. Still, if someone knew anything about me, they wouldn’t mistake me for an impressionist painter from Hollywood. :slight_smile:

10

Some guidelines for staying hard to find:

  • never ever use your real name unless absolutely necessary (like ordering from your fav trusted book seller)
  • if your really think you need to be on failbook or whatever is the latest fad use a fake name there too, your friends will know it and have no problem with it
  • use every nick once and once only (together with unique passwords, store them in a database like keepassx), if you keep using the same nick over and over someone can easily find everything you ever spurted into cyberspace
  • prefer nicks which are common words
  • use throw-away email addresses
  • if a registration needs more data (date of birth etc.) randomize it all every time
  • remember: the internet never forgets (unless you are searching for some real gem, then it’s gone for good)

to make it short: none of your many appearances on the net should correlate to one another, this keeps your traces fragmented and thus relatively useless

paranoid mode: use tor et al to mask ip address, if you just want to stop google knowing your every guilty pleasure I recommend scroogle.org

edit: I forgot to say, changing the user agent of your browser to something really common (eg. a widespread windows string) is a good idea too, especially as a linux user your browser id sticks out like a sore thumb