An occasional series expressing some of my own thoughts and opinions on aspects of digital photography
The power of the web
Posted 02-06-10 at 01:17 PM by Stephen
I had a phone call the other day from someone in the Swansea police. He was trying to track down a previous registered owner of my car. I couldn't help him too much. He knew from the PNC about the car, its tax & MOT, but it seems the person he was after was no longer at the address he had.
All that's not important though, the thing was he had Googled my name. Before I finished talking to him he asked me if I was the photographer whose site he had found on the net. Well It was, and he complimented me on some of the great photos he had been looking at on my personal website.
All this is very nice of course
but it made me think again of how easy it can be these days to find out about someone from the web. Many of us here who contribute to the forums have their own websites or at the very least have a web presence, and its fairly easy to find out things about people. In my case I try to make myself easily found with keywords and metatags on my personal site. In fact if you Google my name, my website is the first entry. Of course there are a lot of other Stephen Ansteys around and many of the ones you will see do not relate to me. If you dig a bit though there are also several links to DPNow as a result of my activity here
If you wanted privacy though, its pretty difficult to hide on the web if you want to use it as we do these days, unless of course you use an Alias and never give out personal details. Many of us though have personal or commercial websites, we have Facebook and Twitter accounts, and its all there for others to look at. Lets just hope that it doesn't bother you.
There are of course many other ways available to the police or other Govt. bodies to track us down if they wished, but that's another issue
All that's not important though, the thing was he had Googled my name. Before I finished talking to him he asked me if I was the photographer whose site he had found on the net. Well It was, and he complimented me on some of the great photos he had been looking at on my personal website.
All this is very nice of course
but it made me think again of how easy it can be these days to find out about someone from the web. Many of us here who contribute to the forums have their own websites or at the very least have a web presence, and its fairly easy to find out things about people. In my case I try to make myself easily found with keywords and metatags on my personal site. In fact if you Google my name, my website is the first entry. Of course there are a lot of other Stephen Ansteys around and many of the ones you will see do not relate to me. If you dig a bit though there are also several links to DPNow as a result of my activity here If you wanted privacy though, its pretty difficult to hide on the web if you want to use it as we do these days, unless of course you use an Alias and never give out personal details. Many of us though have personal or commercial websites, we have Facebook and Twitter accounts, and its all there for others to look at. Lets just hope that it doesn't bother you.
There are of course many other ways available to the police or other Govt. bodies to track us down if they wished, but that's another issue
Total Comments 5
Comments
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Hi Stephen, Google may show your website to you as the first on the hit list, but not necessarily to everyone else. Google will have a record of your search habits and this may influence the results when searching. It also affects the ads you may see on sites showing google banners. I spent some time researching my new phone and now I'm always seeing banner ads for related products and services on various websites
Posted 02-06-10 at 03:07 PM by Ian 
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Yes Stephen it is food for thought and any presence on the Internet may give away a bit about us.
But there are some very obvious sites to avoid giving info too, and you have mentioned a couple Facebook & Twitter, I have no account with these and never will.
Google from some things I have read are not as tight as they used to be either, and i have just opened two email addresses up with them
PatrickPosted 02-06-10 at 11:29 PM by Patrick
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I've never read these blogs before today & found your topic of interest! Some years ago..I think 2006/7, I posted something on an article or obituary written about my cousin Joan Root who was murdered on her farm in Kenya! She had been a wild life photographer/film maker, conservationist/environmentalist! I had mentioned it in a post on a dPNow forum at some point too! An article had also been written in Vanity Fair by Mark Seal about her...'A Flowering Evil'! Not long after that, I was contacted by Mark Seal who asked if I or any of the family could share some anecdotes about Joan as he was doing some research for a film of Joan's life which Julia Robert's was portraying Joan as well as directing! Neither I nor my family wanted to share anecdotes however! How did he find me
Look at dpNow members for his name, date of membership & activity
Posted 16-12-10 at 09:36 AM by Jocelyn Walker
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Jocelyn, I think you mentioned the Roots in one of your first posts on the DPNow forum back in 2006:
http://dpnow.com/forum2/showthread.php?t=650
IanPosted 16-12-10 at 09:45 AM by Ian
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Mark Seal contacted me in 2007, around about the same time as his membership to dpNow!
Posted 16-12-10 at 09:51 AM by Jocelyn Walker
