[Construct]

Warning: Don't enter your own twitter handle unless you want it permanently added to their archive.

I entered my own twitter handle to see what (if anything) would come up. Instead, I was greeted with a message that my handle was not yet in their database, but it would now be added to their list because I entered it. Great.

[goodside]

Meta-warning: Don't rely on your ability to keep a low profile to keep you out of trouble. Having your name on this list shouldn't bother you at all. These are some of the nicest people that have ever spied on you.

[danso]

Right...people should just start to assume that anything they ever post on the Internet will be publicly findable for the rest of the Internet's existence.

15 years ago, you could've written a local newspaper column espousing the most radical of views and felt relatively comfortable that once you moved to a different state that no future employer would ever associate those words to your name. Not anymore. Hell, that's even true for people hundreds of years ago, now that Google has digitized old newspaper collections.

Same with photos. Posting a photo devoid of any caption or metadata may seem anonymous now...but five years from now, there will probably be the search capacity for anyone to efficiently and accurately search by facial-features and stumble across that random photo.

There's already services that mirror twitter feeds and scrape blogs, reposting them for any number of reasons, even just for filling a spam blog. So, this undetweetable just makes such exposure more explicit.

[spc476]

Um, I've worked under that assumption since I started using the Internet in 1991. I've found USENET posts I made 15 years ago on Google.

Don't want something public? Then don't put it on the public Internet.

[icebraining]

That's certainly the best option, but using a pseudonymous goes a long way.

[Dysiode]

Unless you want to use Google+ or Facebook. Although, maybe we'll see a resurgence of real name pseudonyms. Now I just need to think of a name as cool as Mark Twain...

[a3_nm]

Anonymity and pseudonimity exist on the Internet. The main problem is that people don't care enough.