[squarefoot]

A few months ago I did a Google search for my name as i do once or twice a year just to see what comes out. This time I had mixed reactions because among first results there was full text taken from a scanned old magazine dated 1978 or so with my name complete with street address. That was long before the Internet was publicly available and having such data into a magazine would not hurt anyone because people expected it could be useful to get in touch with others with similar interests (electronics in this case), and it surely worked for me because I got a free subscription and some job offers which I would have gladly accepted if I wasn't only 12 years old:) But nearly 40 years have passed, the ubiquitous magazine called the Internet is read by anyone for free, and having your address and/or personal data there isn't that safe anymore. Luckily I relocated a few times since, but what if I didn't? Technically speaking it's great to see an old magazine brought back to life, but what about unfiltered personal information one would expect to remain buried that will instead remain available forever in other contexts? I'm not bashing Google's bots crawling around to turn anything into searchable data, and I surely would never ever want laws to limit what can be searched, but pay attention if you shared personal data on printed material because if until yesterday we said "everything you put on the internet stays there forever", today there is more.

[leonroy]

As a company director since the age of 15 I’ve had my personal address publicly listed for quite a while now.

Prior to that there were phone books and whilst you could choose to be delisted clearly a lot of people didn’t since the books were so thick!

I thoroughly agree that privacy is important but I don’t think people ever really minded very much or if they did not enough to do something about it like lobby for laws to ensure personal addresses are not disclosed publicly.

[widforss]

What's the reason for keeping your address a secret? Genuinely curious, as where I live (se) almost all peoples addresses are public information, and it's really practical.

[dredmorbius]

33 bits. Information is a force multiplier, not power itself (Francis Bacon was wrong.)

https://33bits.wordpress.com/about/

It takes only 33 bits of distinctive information to identify a given person. Specific information about a person, including background, can help provide further information on them -- it tells you where to look (and more importantly, a very good idea as to where not to), who to talk to, and what they might have done.

"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged."

- Cardinal Richelieu (a/k/a Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu et de Fronsac)

"the forced revelation of information makes individual privilege and power more important. When everyone has to play with their cards on the table, so to speak, then people who feel like they can be themselves without consequence do so freely -- these generally being people with support groups of like-minded people, and who are neither economically nor physically vulnerable. People who are more vulnerable to consequences use concealment as a method of protection: it makes it possible to speak freely about controversial subjects, or even about any subjects, without fear of harassment."

https://plus.google.com/+YonatanZunger/posts/WegYVNkZQqq

(Yonatan Zunger is the former chief architect of Google+.)

[corvallis]

I work with prisoners. I have a unique name. My family members and I are the only people with our names in the country, and possibly the world.

If you google my name, you will find my family (parents, sibling), their home address, phone numbers, ages, occupations. It is local.

Upon release or through veiled communication, I or my family members could easily be targeted for harm by inmates or former inmates.

This is a very real concern for me. I have found no way to permanently remove this information from search results.

I encourage people to think more creatively when they cannot think of potential disadvantages of easily searchable personal information.

[wolco]

Create a batch of new yous' with different addresses and make them public across the internet. Your problem is too little misinformation.

[geofft]

> What's the reason for keeping your address a secret?

I, and the people I love, have public political opinions on the internet, and SWATting is a thing.

I can either keep my address a secret (and I do; I use my PO Box whenever possible), or I can decline to participate in public civic discourse and encourage the people I love to do the same.

[daemin]

I think it's not so much keeping this sort of information a secret, it has never really been a secret as anyone with some motivation could find out these things. The big thing these days with computerisation and the Internet is it is making these things trivial to acquire, accumulate, and search. It's not a matter of going to offices and looking through paper records, because it's all at someone's fingertips.

[huhtenberg]

> it's really practical

To what end?

I can't think of a situation when someone might need my address and not being able to get it from me directly.

[bertil]

Addresses can be used for authentication—it routinely is in the UK where I live now.

There are also possible physical safety issues, especially in a country like the US were people seem to have guns and are willing to use them.

I miss Sweden’s transparency and widespread’s trust.

[EADGBE]

Lookup address-by-name seems much more damning than lookup-name-by-address.

Much less is to be assumed about you, like just your name.

Versus the country you live in, state/province/territory, city/village/township, neighborhood, etc.