Call me naive, but I’ve always been fairly blasé about online privacy. Aside from not publishing any photos showing my face, I take no real steps towards hiding my identity. You could probably find out my entire life history—including past addresses, education and employment details—with a little nifty Googling and some lightweight stalking.

Why, then, was I surprised when I logged in to my Google account earlier to find that Big Brother Google knows who I am across the web (twitter, flickr etc) AND also knows about accounts that I have created on behalf of other people/services that are in no way linked to me publicly? I mean, it’s fairly obvious how Google has linked them to me ‘behind the scenes’… but I can’t help but feel like I’ve been perved on by an old dude in his bedroom, peering out from behind his curtains with a pair of binoculars.

I can delete my info and connections as I see fit, but only an idiot would assume that’s the end of it. Oh, to start over again.

As those of you who read my Asides (see sidebar) will have noticed, I’m in the process of re-writing some of my pages. I started with my ‘About Jem‘ section, revising the information that I display about myself. While I haven’t added or taken away any information really (simply changed the formatting), it did get… read full entry »