Have you Googled yourself lately?

I know internet privacy is an ongoing issue and the mantra "be careful what you post" has been told to us all repeatedly, but I just discovered a new (to me, at least) and alarming site when I Googled myself.

Spock.com is one of a few sites that now troll the web and aggregate EVERYTHING about you on one convenient page. My full name? Check. Phone, email, birthdate? Check. Photos from the Friendster account I created almost 10 years ago, that I haven't even logged in to in almost as long? Check. Spock also offers the "feature" of people being able to tag you with whatever term they want, which, as you can imagine, is not always a good thing. Here is an article on Spock and the tags - http://bit.ly/11LKEe and here is another article in Wired - http://bit.ly/llHdf

I never used my full name on Myspace, and my facebook profile is only viewable if you are my friend. I have now gone through and deleted my Myspace and Friendster accounts. As actors, we are in a tricky situation, because our LA Casting, Actors Access, LinkedIn, and personal webpages are also showing up, so any contact information listed there is now added to the Spock page. I know this is available by any Google search, but somehow it's scarier to me to have it all in one place.

The Spock privacy policy states that since they pull their content from the web, the only way to avoid having it on their site is to remove it from the web. Since I'm not going to remove my resume and contact info from Actor's Access, I guess I just have to live with it. If you create an account with Spock, they email you whenever anyone edits your profile. I'll be doing that, since it seems like the only way to try to stay in control of any invalid or unsavory information.

The articles are from 2007, and I know that I have googled myself since then, so I'm not sure why I'm just seeing it now. I know there isn't much to be done, but I just wanted to give everybody a heads up. You might want to Google yourself more often. (Giggity. I've wanted to say that every time I've said "google yourself.")

So. Be warned. And yet another reason I'll always keep my blogger identity at least thinly veiled.