I had a shock yesterday, a big one.

Hands up if you’ve ‘Googled’ your own name. Ok ALL of you put your hands down and I know it’s ALL of you.

Hands up if you’ve ‘Googled’ your unassociated username that you use on shops and membership sites. Hmm not so many, well try it sometime. I did it yesterday with the user account I had originally set up on an old email address 10 years ago and was a little taken aback.

In a text document that was highlighted on Page One of the search was the username and my password, clearly identified in the main search output. When I clicked on the link I was directed to HybridHackers.org where there was a full list of more than 4000 usernames and the associated passwords. Bobby try changing your password from ‘Bobby’ to something else!

With a little more googling and adding the odd word extra here and there, I found that I was into PVC, Leather, Plastic and Latex, I enjoyed cross-dressing and was a virgin male despite being over 50 years of age. What was more worrying again was that my location was accurate and my age too on many sites, however the one thing that I have always done is use a false birth date for each site where I felt this was an unreasonable request and this had been duplicated incorrectly several times showing which sites had divulged the data (I have a system based on the day’s date. Some of these have a rather stern email waiting for them tomorrow morning)

I had joined and left several sites including stock trading sites, porn sites, kitchen appliance vendors and most worryingly the fan site for Girls Aloud. I apparently had a political affiliation with the BNP and yet also was an adamant supporter of a UK Jewish Member of Parliament. On visiting these sites and using the username and password, I was either given entry or asked if I would like to renew my membership. Some of the sites used my name correctly, some had mispelt it and some had used completely different names (Steve Jackson, I want a word!)

In short, we all keep checks on our own names on the internet but rarely look at the usernames that we think are completely disassociated with the real ‘us’ and here’s the bad news...they aren’t. With some simple and logical thinking I discovered my correct age and birth date, my local area but not address and over 35 misuses of the username and password, 14 of which had also used me as the user.

Not all of the statements about my proclivities above are correct, I’ll leave you and your imagination to decide as to which are true but most certainly, the mental note is made and I am learning rapidly

I must make sure I take more care online I must make sure I take more care online I must make sure I take more care online I must make sure...

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