USA TODAY -- Apr 14 -- A growing amount of free personal information is so easy to find online that many Internet regulars don't think of it as spying. Plug a name into Google and you have an instant background check of your best friend, your brother-in-law or that guy or gal you met last night at a bar. "You can bug people the way spy agencies used to do 20 years ago - really cheap now," says Howard Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. But now, idle curiosity prompts many Net users to nonchalantly do "soft surveillance" - plugging a name into a search engine to see what turns up. "Everyone does it," says James Hong of San Francisco, founder of online dating and photo-rating Web site Hot or Not. "I do it on new employees; I do it if I meet a cute girl, and I want to know more. Maybe I'm crazy, but who doesn't do it?
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Prying Eyes are Everywhere
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So true. It's a phenomenon. You even see movies and television shows talking about it; "I googled you . . ."
It's information at the tips of our fingers and of course many of us are going to use it to our advantage to make better decisions in our lives.
Posted by: Personal Ads | Apr 17, 2005 at 05:34 PM