|
By: Rick McCallion
As a very young laddie, I do recall watching the television show “Romper Room” (once again for fear of dating myself). One of the highlights of this show was the “Magic Mirror”. The hostess of this show used this mirror to “see” each of the children in the viewing audience. Of course, she just rhymed off random children’s names but for the little child sitting in the living room in his jammies, it felt like someone was able to reach through the technology to see him.
In today’s society, I almost see the Internet like this scenario and it’s not always a good thing.
So much of what we do on the Internet is captured electronically and is next to impossible to get rid of. The scary part is that more and more people are using these tools to lookup information on us. The searchers might be a prospective employer, or perhaps someone who we are recently dating, or perhaps someone with more nefarious intent.
A few cases in point;
A year or so ago, I applied for a volunteer position. I received a strange phone call a few days later from the organization and the man asked (with some hesitancy) if I had musical inclination. Knowing how much I am NOT musical at all, I laughed and told him that I didn’t. I then asked why he asked that question. He stated that he had googled me and found a fit for another Rick McCallion who was in a band that promoted social anarchy. This gentleman then went on to say that they were initially hesitant to have me involved in this project if I was that Rick McCallion.
There are numerous postings that I have made years ago on software support sites. Although there is nothing incriminating about these posts, it still makes me a little hesitant about what I post online.
I was also quite interested to find out that when I googled my name, that even though I closed my account a few months ago, my Twitter profile was still there. Thankfully, there wasn’t anything embarrassing in it, but it goes to show how dangerous our personas can be.
One final example, in my technology blog (plug here!!! http://techumanity.blogspot.com) I had noticed after I had posted a blog entry that I had a spelling mistake. I went back and corrected it but am vexed that the original blog entry has still been indexed by Google and as a result, this typo is evident when someone Googles my name.
You think that perhaps because some website has since ceased operation – that your content is gone? Nope. There are a few websites that permanently keep archives of the World Wide Web. Try going to the Internet Arhive Wayback Machine at http://www.archive.org and try looking at existing domains or even those ones that are no longer in existence. Truly some scary stuff!
The Internet plays for keeps. For the most part, what we write is accessible to all and that is the very scary reality.
"Rick is a seasoned software developer with over 25 years of experience in designing and developing systems. In addition to the software development experience, he is also experienced in training users of various skills and assisting organizations in determining their information technology needs."
|
Events
