[throwxwy]

I keep my social media accounts locked down and off search engines, so I was surprised to see my name, photo and a link to my profile appearing in a Facebook list of people with my name when I self-Googled. The problem seems to apply to localized versions of FB (it-it, en-gb) so it is probably a bug.

Google Plus had a similar problem, but for much longer. Even though my account was locked down, the people who had me in their circles were showing up in Google search results for my name, so I deleted my Google Plus profile, and advised my friends and family to do the same.

I nuked my Pinterest profile after it was scraped despite being locked down.

FB also did something rather disturbing the other day that reminded me why vigilance is critical. It generated a (private) music video about my friends, but freakily, the person who it started up with was a secret crush -the attraction was mutual but never went anywhere-from 15 years ago (we became FB friends a few years later). The two of us don't interact much on FB, so it must have inferred this based on her ongoing views of my profile, or vice-versa. My wife has no idea about this crush, and is friends with the other person. Our circle of mutual friends does know about it, but has kept it secret for years. Having it appear on my FB timeline would have been awkward, to say the least.