Privacy Online

I was just working on something completely unrelated when it was forced home upon me how little online privacy there is. I came across a snippet of information in my web analytics that told me that someone who works for Threshers is researching a certain view of someone who works for Marks and Spencers. I will not go into any more detail about this view, just that while I do not know either of the people involved I could possibly have relations with either in a work context. It seems almost frightening that in the course of my work, which is actually potentially related to both of these companies I could see things that neither party thinks has been made public.

I already knew that when you do anything online you leave a trail of breadcrumbs behind you. These allow people to follow you around if they want to do so. So why does it surprise me that these facts come to light? It surprised me because it is a concrete example where before I only had hypothetical examples.

Hypothetically you might be looking for a way to get back at a neighbour and so you might search for "bad things neighbour's-name" and then find a site which talks about your neighbour in a good way. You then leave, but your neighbour’s friend who runs the site sees the search engine term and goes to your neighbour and tells him that this referral occurred. Worse than that you searched from work and your company name was on the request. Your neighbour knows where you work. Now your neighbour can probably guess it was you. Small world online isn't it?

Things can get worse however. The site owner is a curious type and does a Google for the same terms and cannot see his site. He wonders how you came to be there and perseveres a bit. He discovers that for these terms he ranks 153 in the rankings and realises that to get there would involve paging though 16 pages of search results (standard config, it could be less pages if there are more results per page). That shows a certain amount of determination and implies strong feelings on behalf of the searcher. He can also see the snippet Google shows and realise that by this time you were clutching at straws. So now your neighbour knows you hate him with a vengeance (or were just drunk and stupid?). A little innocent web analytics has revealed something quite personal to someone you did not really want to know.

It all sounds pretty unlikely, far fetched and a bit of a stretch. Far fetched though it is, this is the equivalent of what has just happened. Given the snippet I have seen I am not going to take any action based on what I saw, but I could. I am an amiable sort, not given to giving people black looks, but if I were to give someone a look of hatred you can rest assured i would be looking over my shoulder first.