To think that everything that is posted on the internet is completely private and safe is extremely naïve thinking. Your information of which you post online is readily available for anyone to find, even your friends and family. Googling yourself has never become more eye opening.
By ‘Googling’ someone, the information that is available are most likely their accounts to various social media which may include photos, phone numbers and/or address’ to their homes. Even if this information is private, individuals can still access this information.
Searching my own name up I found: all my social media accounts, various photos which I have posted online, accounts which I haven’t used in years such as the bottom one (don’t judge I was 12) and my twitter account at the top of the list.
In America, websites such as ZabaSearch (to find an individuals address or phone number) and Wink (finding hidden information on someone’s social media) are tools which do the hard work for you in finding information about an individual (some of these are paid for services of course). The results are indeed scary.
The internet is becoming a place of total surveillance as everything that is posted, uploaded or submitted is recorded, being a river of copies if you will.
“Every time we make any connection online, you are making a copy of a copy of a copy of information. Anytime you go to a website online, it copies information from a server on that website resides.” ~Kevin Kerry
Kevin Kerry’s manifesto here relates heavily to the case of my own Google search of myself, information and content which was made years ago still resides on the internet today. The aggregation of content online however doesn’t slow the ability of an individual to find a single node as can be shown through this example.
“We are online (we inhabit it) and it wants to remember. Each node broadcasts and remembers.” ~Ted Mitew
The fact that hackers have this somewhat private information readily accessible to them is quite confronting. Nothing online is ever private, where there is a link, there is a way.
And with this, we are going into the dark, where no individual who uses the internet is safe.
krisesandchrosses 
At the moment, I’m somewhat happily ignorant about how much of my personal information is on there. I’m slightly tempted to look up ZabaSearch and Wink but I know that over about 8yrs of social media’ing I’ve probably dumped more personal information than I want to know about. In all seriousness this was a good post, I can tell you’ve done a lot of further research and thinking on the matter which makes for a great read. Keep them coming.
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You’re right, the Internet has become a place of ‘total surveillance’ and it’s really alarming that you can find pretty much anything about anyone. As the internet evolves, security will be forced to evolve with it or else we will all be left vulnerable. Maybe a smart security robot should be next?
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Social media ubiquity has totally democratised hacking. How accessible is finding someone you may have met somewhere going off a minimal amounts of information you actually accrued through meeting them – stalkers are rejoicing in this golden age paved for them
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