Thursday, January 22, 2009

I'm not Marc L.

I'm just after reading an article* about, well, I suppose internet privacy, or lack thereof.

It starts with: Happy Birthday Marc. The 5th of December 2008, you're celebrating your 29th birthday. You don't know me, but I know you very well....

... and it goes on quite a bit, basically demonstrating that the author knows a lot about Marc L's life, job, habits, travels, etc thanks solely to information gleaned from Google, Facebook and/or Flickr.

It was interesting to read how he came across this information, and how Marc L was found totally at random through a Flickr search. It was also a little worrying and got me thinking about how much information about me is publically available. I set my facebook profile to semi-private or something a while back, and I don't have as many photos on my Picasa account as this Marc L had on his Flickr account (17000), nor do I write much about my photos on Picasa and I've never added them to a group or list etc. It is possible to find me through a google search, but none of the information available is up-to-date - my university webpage just gives the address and phone number of the university.

Anyway, it's just some food for thought, and thanks to Aurélie for giving me the link to the article.

*Sorry, the article's in French and I'm not going to translate it as it's quite long. You'll just have to learn to read the language.

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