Microblog: You're Naked On The Web

OK, well, maybe not naked, per se - but there's sure a lot of stuff out there on almost all of us. This topic seems to be coming up more and more lately - and there was a great blog article by my friend Dan Tynan yesterday that pointed out a new social media site that will do all the hard work for you: Spokeo.

It seems that this little wonder site will take all the "hassles" and legwork out of cyber stalking - or just digging up dirt on you co-workers, employees or ex-girlfriends. From their homepage:

Want to see something juicy? Spokeo searches deep within 41 major social networks to find truly mouth-watering news about friends and coworkers.

Ummmm.... yeah. Welcome to the new way of interacting - and having people know more about you than you probably would have guessed. Part of that is the fault of social media - and part of that is our own damn fault. Hot tip: if you don't want people to know personal stuff about you - it's probably too late. Even if you dump all your profiles on all the social media - there are saved caches of that stuff - and it will probably NEVER go away.

But at least I don't live in New Hampshire! Robert L. Mitchell when doing research for an article in ComputerWorld - found out that his personal information (including full social security number, address, kid's names, etc) were easily found on the Internet - for FREE. It seems that the folks in the good state of New Hampshire, in an effort to make government more transparent - scanned all kinds of tax liens, divorces, and all other matter of "public" data and just made it live.

Nice. If you don't want people to know personal stuff about you... ummm... then just disconnect your phones, your email, your social media - in fact - just turn off the wireless card and unplug that Ethernet cable. Yeah, probably that won't even help at this point.