I have spoken to some customers before about privacy and the new "deep search" services available which include www.pipl.com (which is scary enough!). I was surprised today to find a customer emailing me to ask if they could buy me a book from my Amazon wish list instead of using my virtual bar at www.getabeerinfor.me/nickbird.
I headed off to the web address they gave me (where they found my wish list) at http://www.123people.co.uk/s/nick+bird and was surprised to see a link to my Amazon Wish List at : http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/registry/wishlist/1KIVU3CTU17NV?tag=section_wishlist0e-21
How bloody scary is this? If you have a dig around for my name you'll see the usual stuff you'd expect but newsgroup posts from "me" dated 1994 are actually not me - would a future employer / supplier / client recognise the difference?
This highlights how everything you ever put online is being used by someone for financial gain - even if you protect your account with passwords on leading sites such as Amazon, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo etc you need to be aware that your content WILL appear in other places. What happens if your sexual or political preferences are exposed online via this type of service without your permission? What would happen if you were a staunch BNP member and you were denied a job because a prospective employer had found this out through one of these "deep search" sites? Could you sue? Would you?
I don't have anything online I wouldn't tell my friends but what about the stuff I would tell my friends but wouldn't necessarily want my clients to know? Does it matter? Does anyone care? Am I the only person who is VERY concerned about how third parties could use this sort of information to discriminate (and not just in business) against people who said something online ten years ago and now cannot remove their comments / profile / photos from the deep search sites that index content without asking permission?
Food for thought indeed....