Kate's Blog

The Anonymous Web

Some advice I've received is to make check to see from time to time to see what people would find if they search for you using Google. When I last tried this a few years ago, I found I turned up on about page 2 or 2, with this blog, my PhD thesis, the list of past students for Jeffrey Ullman, and, if you dig deep enough, a contribution I made to X11 in about 1987. Not stellar, but definitely present.

But today, I found - nothing! Not surprisingly, the #1 search result goes to Kate Morris, Holistic Search Engine Marketing Consultant. Well, if you're in the search engine business, you'd better show up first on the list. There's Kate Morris "a self-confessed 'beauty junkie'" (nope, not me). There's also at least one photographer, an author or five, a holistic health practitioner, a "Miss Kate Morris" who seems to have been the source of Nigerian spam email two years ago... the list goes on. There's even a Kate Morris in IT who worked for a bank in Sydney (my home town) and a movie "Kate Morris, Vice President" (not me either). Some of them lead far more interesting lives than me: a sky diver, a hammer thrower, St. Patrick's Day Parade queen...

When I started constructing my digital identity, I was careful. The 'net was small - and the few women on the net sometimes attracted unwanted attention. I didn't use my full name when posting to newsgroups, and was careful about what I committed to email. Even now, I am careful to try to separate the "business" Kate from my personal life. It's not that I am absent. I'm on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Skype, AIM, Plaxo and Naymz (though the last two are not updated currently). I'm also on some special-interest groups, like Ravelry. Google finds other people who share my name on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo and Naymz, but not me.

Today, I'm wondering if there is a point to all of this secrecy. If you are just another tree in a forest, do you really need to try to keep a low profile? Once everyone is connected, it becomes very difficult to single out any individual person.

PS: On page 20 of the search results, I finally found The Mathematics Genealogy Project - Katherine Morris - which is definitely me. Of course, it is also 18 years ago! It's another 20 pages until you find another link to me. It works better if you search for "Katherine" rather than "Kate", though Google helpfully includes "Katherine" in the results for "Kate".

Posted at 10:35AM 05 Jun, 2009 by Kate Morris in Personal  |  Comments[1]