I’ve never said what paper I work for and I was going to keep it that way anyhow. I also don’t want a potential future employer - or my current employer - to know that I post here, given that I express a political opinion from time to time. I suppose it’s slightly more possible that someone could figure it out if anybody can google my posts. Which is just great, and I wouldn’t have known about it without this thread. Thanks a lot, Chicago Reader.
I never thought of this. Well said and good point.
Your real name is Marley23? :eek:
I realize most people are extremely careful about their online personas being kept separate from their IRL personas. I’m also realistic enough to know that if someone wants to track you down and find out who you are, they’re going to. To put oneself on an internet forum (or online billpay with your bank, or magazine/newspaper subscription, or streaming media svc, or buy flowers through FTD online a single solitary time and get put on their godawful list, etc, etc., etc.) and believe that you can still maintain the same level of privacy as if you didn’t own a computer and lived in a cave is not only naive, it’s flat out self deception.
Well said. I feel like we’re now in a glass house.
Not only that, but sometimes members here post things that are off the wall or way off base, and there’s nothing to stop these nuggets from being dredged up by Google. If someone asserted, for example,
that the Minute Men of the American Revolution were actually so called because they were diminutive in size, then there’d be nothing to prevent that pearl of “wisdom” from being found.
What about spoiler boxes? Do they work in a Google listing? Ye mods and administrators, what have ye done!??
Maureen, I may as well respond to your comment as well…the thing is, it wasn’t exactly “the general public” before. We weren’t a closed society, obviously, but for someone to be able to search meant they had gone through the steps of guesting for a while, then joining, and coming to understand something of the culture here.
I don’t necessarily disagree. I’m just not worked up about it.
OTTOMH, C M Keller, Zev Steinhardt, and even Lynn Bodoni and Ed Zotti.
Even if somebody does know who you are, they previously couldn’t search out your old SDMB posts unless they became a member. It isn’t just the issue of being identified or tracked down. It’s the issue of something you said in private now being public.
Spectre Of Pithecanthrepous You have an excellent point about context. I know that other Dopers are familiar with my feelings on homosexuality. But now a google search can turn up a single out of context Pit post where I expressed my feelings about a hate crime by ranting over-the-top bigotry about how ’ the fggt was unnatural and deserved it’. This would lead to a flood of hate mail, and worse still, a bunch of mail from bigots patting me on the back.
Sure, but there are degrees of care you can take. I quite liked the fact that SDMB pages were un-indexed. It is a (minor) consideration for me that my thoughts are now googleable, although a cursory poke around suggests that their pagerank isn’t so high as to be worrisome. Basically, if you’re concerned about your privacy, then posting on a publically searchable messageboard is less desirable than posting on one that isn’t. This is a perfectly reasonable concern, and one which I’m sure a couple of people will be thinking twice about.
Well, my last name isn’t 23…
I’ve changed some of my personal information, although google doesn’t appear to make retroactive changes, and you can’t get my e-mail through this site anymore. Anyway I’m fine with it, just irritated. I did a little searching and it seems like it’s not very easy to go through the site that way. If you google “Marley23,” you get me, but there’s nothing that seems identifying.
You know there are other engines besides google that search the boards. They have worked for years.
Yeah I don’t really like that.
http://triblabs.com/Pics/Marley%20Shelton/Album/pages/marley23_jpg.htm
how you doing? 
damn too bad this isn’t you–or is it! :dubious:
see you just need to pick a common name like hakuna matata
you have to slog through 2000 references to the song
Do you remember where was this said? It does sound familiar…
Genuinely interested: which? None that obey robots.txt, surely?
Well, I had to slog through nearly a FULL PAGE of Google links to some stoopid “Cliff Edwards” guy before I got to some of MY pearls of wisdom.
http://www.boardreader.com/
It is not doing a great job but doing some vanity searches “gazpacho SDMB” gave me some hits. There was another one that I saw some use in their sig as a plee to help the hamsters.
Great. For the record, I am not the Ravenous Lady mentioned on this website dedicated to bondage. I am not SilverBeard’s sub, nor will I ever be one. I’ve only looked at 40 hits of 300. I’m scared to look at any more.
Since the whole world can now google any of our posts, I will be changing my name so that it’s not related to any name I’ve used on the internet in the past. It feels like my safe little community is wide open.
Time to take my email address out of profile, etc. I paid for a subscription because of the abiltiy to search past posts. If I can do this via Google, I may not renew. I can live without posting.
Nope. I’s definitely a guy.
I’ve turned off e-mail now, and I see you can’t access that retroactively. So that’s good.
yea I knew that–just giving you shit 
Hey better than when you google my name and you get a warthog and a meerkat–at least you got a hot babe.
I’m kind of glad I changed my user name now. Try and find a post for me on google, I have to slog through pages here doing a vanity search.