[svachalek]

We ran into a lot of stuff like this in the early days of the web. For example, there was a lot of information that was "public" in that anyone could go to the city courthouse and ask to see the documents. But it changed in nature when you could suddenly look up anyone in the country by typing their name in your browser.

[abustamam]

I am not quite sure why my address history, known aliases, and sometimes phone number, are publicly available to anyone who Googles my name, and I'm not sure how to opt out of this.

[latexr]

> I'm not sure how to opt out of this.

If you’re a EU citizen, do a web search for “right to be forgotten”.

https://support.google.com/legal/answer/10769224

[abustamam]

Alas, I'm in the US.

[socksy]

Then as a California resident you should presumably be googling instead about the CCPA and the right to delete :)

[abustamam]

I've done that. They pop up like hydra heads. The point isn't right to delete. The point is right to not have my personal info plastered all over the internet without me having to contact each site and say "plz stop" and for them to say "OK we'll do it in 7-10 business days"

[d3Xt3r]

You'd be considered lucky if you can even find an email address. I had some of my personal info crop up on Google searches on Fedora mailing lists, I've emailed various people at Fedora to get them delete my old messages or redact them, but never received a response. :(

[mswphd]

we used to ship mass lists of addresses and phone numbers to people in each town and it was fine/appreciated.

[disposition2]

You could also easily opt out with the single entity that shipped that information.

[jhbadger]

Yes, but getting an unlisted number was considered weird and against the norm even if possible. Even in the early 2000s when I dropped my landline, my parents were aghast - "if you do that, you won't be in the phone book! How will anyone get in contact with you?"

[bigbuppo]

And you often had to pay for the privilege... A dollar a month for them to not put your name and number in the phonebook.

[pera]

Yeah and back then it wasn't used as a sort of UUID to track every single thing you do in your life... Different times

[_doctor_love]

You ever had a bump in the night my guy?

Or a stalker?

[nitwit005]

For a practical example of that, a lot of documents used to have things like social security numbers, and they started stripping that information off once it was visible online.