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A good idea to counteract privacy risks of this sort is to occasionally search yourself by your full name or by username (one that can be traced back to you, th

A good idea to counteract privacy risks of this sort is to occasionally search yourself by your full name or by username (one that can be traced back to you, that is) across all major search engines and see if any of your data is out in the open in any public forum. Same goes for searching your phone numbers, physical addresses and your email address (preferably in double-quotes for an exact match) -- I discovered mine stashed in a blog full of random email address in which my ID was a part of -- reported it to Google and it was gone in a couple of days. I perform this 'exercise in privacy' once every three months -- which for me is the average time in which I sign-up for a new service or product using my primary email address; YMMV. A related article for those who're interested (shameless plug) -- https://abhishekbalaji.wordpress.com/2016/09/24/why-you-should-occasionally-google-yourself/ https://abhishekbalaji.wordpress.com/2016/09/24/why-you-shou...

yuriyb 9y ago
Google provides a way to "subscribe" to email notifications of new search results for a given term (don't have the link handy right now). I've been subscribed to results for my full name for many years, and occasionally get an email of a new mention here and there.
- abhiminator 9y ago
  I think you're referring to Google search alerts[0]. I agree, that's a pretty neat tool to be subscribed to, should be useful in drastically cutting down the response time when responding to instances of one's personally identifiable data leaking on the web. [0] https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/4815696 https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/4815696
shostack 9y ago
What was the mechanism by which you reported it?
- abhiminator 9y ago
  I reported the blog that was hosting the violating content, not the particular search result in question. My apologies, should have made that clear in my earlier response.

yuriyb 9y ago

Google provides a way to "subscribe" to email notifications of new search results for a given term (don't have the link handy right now). I've been subscribed to results for my full name for many years, and occasionally get an email of a new mention here and there.

abhiminator 9y ago
I think you're referring to Google search alerts[0]. I agree, that's a pretty neat tool to be subscribed to, should be useful in drastically cutting down the response time when responding to instances of one's personally identifiable data leaking on the web. [0] https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/4815696 https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/4815696

shostack 9y ago

What was the mechanism by which you reported it?

abhiminator 9y ago
I reported the blog that was hosting the violating content, not the particular search result in question. My apologies, should have made that clear in my earlier response.