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Comment by welly | Hacker News Reader

Just googled myself for the first time in years. I was surprised how little information about me exists. It took until page 5 for a reference to me rather than other people with the same name and that was in relation to a limited company I us to have when I was a contractor. I only appear again 8 pages later.

I've removed myself from all social media since the start of this year and am in the process of de-googling myself.

So I'm pretty well hidden it seems. Still have some work to do but so far so good.

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"So I'm pretty well hidden it seems."

Don't you believe it.The public facing side is the free crumbs. The good stuff is sequestered and for sale to "authorized" 3rds. It seems to me like the web has become an analogue of a "dark age", massive amounts of knowledge is hidden from most in a blinding white noise, while the few who pay can have as much as they can afford.

I'm fortunate in that I don't come up in the first 10 or so pages if you google my name. I've never gone deeper than that. It's a combination of a pretty generic name and an early, almost accidental, decision not to use my full name on any social network -- mostly I'll just use my first. I didn't really plan it, but I'm glad I accidentally ended up ungoogleable.

My entire set of real names is basically a string of generic names. They also happen to conflict with a famous sports ball player and another professional. Finding me on the internet is difficult.

Even after you leaked that info?

Yes. I even go to the lengths to seed my online identity with other names to add confusion to anyone looking me up.

I just did the same. Linkedin came up, and then fantastically 192.com lists my previous addresses along with previous occupants. This includes an ex, three people I shared university accommodation with, and fantastically my parents names: including my mother who kept her maiden name.

All those were done before I really understood opt-out on the electoral register, and my parents registered me without telling me. And I have no way of removing the information, despite the fact that mother's maiden name is still bizarrely used as a security question.

In my experience, searching for any English/American (or Russian) name turns up at least a dozen people with the same first and last names. If a name is extra generic like John Smith, I don't even bother searching because the task is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Although, people with an Anglo name do usually have middle names :) Maybe everyone should take up a generic name to disappear on the internet?

I’m pretty much unique in spite of not having an obviously unusual name. Sufficiently mixed countries I guess.

The thing that seems vaguely scary is having a fairly unusual name that’s shared by someone notorious who is plausibly you. I knew someone who shared a name with someone else who lived in NYC and was the object of considerable local hatred. The gut I knew literally got death threats on his phone.

Take it from an English / American that there are plenty of names of ours that, while reasonably rare, have only one person for hits. :)

Yes, but you should not assume that the person who searches won't specify additional terms. For example "first_name last_name" yields different results than "first_name second_name third_name fourth_name last_name" or "first_name last_name city". It all depends on how eager the person is to find information about you, and how clever they are with search engine usage. You cannot test all the parameters!

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