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April 18, 2006
On privacy and being Smith, Jones or Marieke
Don't take this personally, but if your name happens to be John Smith, or, let's see now, Joe Brown. Or any variety of Jones or Gray, Bleeding Edge isn't going to be able to do business with you in future. We've just read the Next cover story in The Age this morning - a fascinating exploration of online privacy issues, and were struck by the following piece of advice from private investigator Chris Cooper, to those for whom being a nonentity is nirvana:
Change your surname to something generic such as Smith or Gray. A lot of effort goes into determining which records apply to which person. Ten billion Google searches for John Smith may hold all the information you need - except you just have to go through and work out which relate to your John Smith!You can see the implications. If your name happens to be, umm, a touch generic, people are going to think that you've got something to hide. So while we know that Smith, Jones, Brown etc are perfectly respectable names with a noble heritage, it's pretty clear they've become an unacceptable liability in the digital age. We know that it's a slight imposition, switching from the name your parents gave you - and the oldies are probably going to be upset - but it's in your own best interests to adopt a more identifiable surname. Or possibly an unusual
Marieke Hardy explains in the story that she was "outed" for her left-wing blogging [WARNING: although Marieke has a sweet young face, her language would stop a bullock in its tracks] by a newspaper columnist - could it have been that horrid Andrew Bolt person? - despite the fact that she "didn't promote a connection between her online and real-world selves".
Marieke claims she "feared a network backlash when the connection between her online life and work life was made", and possibly, for a split second, she did, although the fact that she declared, when she was outed, "We're in The Bolt. We've Made It. I want to tongue-kiss you all. And I will, if you turn up to the Les Savy Fav gig at the Corner" sort of, makes you think that really, she didn't mind a bit. So go ahead. Be bold. Get a blog and call yourself Marieke Smith. And we'll trust you implicitly.
Posted by cw at April 18, 2006 09:31 AM
Comments
It's so easy to type a comment into a web form, without realizing you're possibly entering your thoughts into a highly accessible permanent record. Unless you take real care, it's far from anonymous. I came to this realization a while ago, and since then I've been slowly trying to pare down the stuff that you can find by googling my name. Although my past is far from nefarious, you never know what comment might come back to haunt you, and I've left plenty of comments and articles on web sites in my time.
A timely reminder.
Posted by: Colin J at April 18, 2006 10:59 AM
CW - about time you stopped using PC incorrect terms like "Christian name" - especially when talking about uncommong names like Marieke.
And FWIW - my name was rare - until the internet!
Kolya
CW: Quite right. I shall severely chastise myself.
Posted by: kolya at April 18, 2006 04:01 PM
Colin: I disagree - it is more important to write as many meaningless, inoffensive comments as possible, so that anything you say which can be held against you is 1 of thousands rather than the isolated comment you actually feel strongly about.
You can't control what others say about you, but you can drown it out
Posted by: Alex at April 18, 2006 07:58 PM