Search Engines & Your Privacy Online

Hey. Welcome to the first in our series of QA Guides where we'll try and give some helpful knowledge and advice to keep you safe in cyberspace. We'll be honest without being melodramatic and we'll just get to the point. So. Without more time-wasting...

Me, and my identity

A lot of us use the internet to access things we can't in real life. It provides freedom to be who you are. And that's brilliant. But you've gotta be careful about what you post on websites because you never know where information will end up. If you don't want your friends, or your parents, or your neighbour's dog to know what you get up to then there's one simple rule to remember:

• Never post personal information
  for example...
  
  
• Your full name
  just use your first name or nickname instead
  
  
• Your email or instant messaging (MSN/AIM/Yahoo) address
  give people you trust this via private messages instead
  
  
• Your phone number
  the last thing you want is randoms calling you
  
  
• Your address
  there's nutters in this world!
  
  
• Your school
  people aren't stupid and it's really easy to guess who people are from their nicknames online if they also state their school
  
  
• And if you're not out...
  if people in real life don't know you're LGBT, then it's wise if you:
  
  
• Don't upload your photo
  if people find it, there's no denying it's you!
  
  
• Don't use the same username as you always use
  it will easily link to you if you use your usual username or display name

But I mean, how would people in the real world find out?

Search Engines! Sites like Google, Yahoo and MSN Network have bots (automated programs basically) that trawl through the internet and store what they find. So if you post your full name, like "Hi there, I'm Joe Bloggs", then if someone searches your name, "Joe Bloggs" in a search engine, your post could come up in the results. So it's really easy for people to find out all sorts of stuff about you if you post self-identifiable information like the above.

More annoyingly, if you post your email address then the chances are that some spam bot will harvest your address and you'll end up receiving even more spam than you already do.

Whatever, I really don't care

It's kinda important that you do care. You wouldn't give your address or phone number or even your full name to some stranger on the street, would ya? And that would only be one person! But by posting stuff like that online, you're potentially giving that info to millions of people! Now does that seem like a good plan? Nopes.

The world, and the internet, is full of really weird people and it's best to remain cautious. Worth taking seriously, doods.

Fine. What about the information I give to websites when I register?

All good websites, like QA, have a Privacy Policy. They can be pretty boring to read but if a website doesn't have one, don't register. The Privacy Policy states what the site will and won't do with your information. For example, ours specifically says that we won't distribute your personal details -- so you know things like your email address and Date of Birth are safe.

You're making me wary! What's with the untrustworthiness?

Read on, dear friends: Trust & Online Relationships.