Virtual Footprints

Last week I got married. Yes, this is phenomenal in itself, but it also got me thinking about things like if and where you change your name online. Which then leads to trying to take a complete inventory of all the places your name may likely be online. I thought this would be an easy 5 minute task. It is, unfortunately, fraught with a minefield of post modern realizations. Basically, your name and personal information are likely in literally hundreds of places strewn across the world wide web.

I figured, Facebook, LinkedIn, and maybe somewhere else would be about the size of it. But after a few minutes of Googling, the ugly realization set in. There's more out there about me than I realized or even want to own up to. I've been promiscuous in my net-relations. I am, essentially a web whore.

Besides the typical panoply of email accounts (an old Hotmail, newer Gmail, an obligatory Ymail - for Flickr) I also had 6 blogs in varying states of disrepair and neglect. Add to that the aforementioned Facebook and day-old twitter account (just everybody's doing it!) I also discovered I had a many years-old Friendster as well as a MySpace account (the former from my years spent overseas, the latter to be blamed on an old boyfriend (oh yeah, you definitely want my space, not facebook - ughhhh) There was even a Blackplanet.com handle that made me flush with embarrassment when I read it. I had a scarlet social networking past. I needed to get rid of the evidence - post haste!

Just as if things couldn't get any worse, I realized, that there were also a host of dating sites that may still even have an identifiably current photo of me circulating. Oh, the horror! Not that I'm on the down-low about web dating - no, that's where I snagged my new hubby - it's more the breadth and width of my previous web dating proclivities that leaves me overcome with the desire to nuke any and everything that could ever be linked back to me.

Really, you name it, I was on it. From stodgy E-harmony (which dissed and dismissed me because I was separated - a marital purgatory that didn't go down well with the vaguely religulous site, to my curiosity-gets-the-cat turn with Ashley Madison, the site for cheating spouses (and yes, it was just for research, I swear I didn't contribute to any homewrecking - not my style.)

Then there was the frisky urbane set on Nerve, followed by the wild-west of date sites, OKcupid, with the frankly out-to-get-laid ethic of Fling rounding out the list. You name it, I been there. Like I said before, I get around.

So shouldn't the process of disappearing any and all traces of your former on-line lives be straightforward and simple? One would think so. Unfortunately, the obstacles are many. From no longer having access to a dead email address used for a site's account, to forgetting you ever signed up in the first place, to failing to remember usernames and passwords. But I also realized something else, that basically some sites won't even let you nuke your accounts, allowing you only to 'hide' them or cancel a subscription, so you're always ready to be 'reactivated' should you need to. Like they're doing you some thoughtful favor. Now, if I put my conspiracy hat on for a second, and adjust the foil covered rabbit ears a sec, I'd realize that its really just an insidious plot to keep tabs on so many sheep-like consumers, should the need to blackmail you arise sometime in the future. Ok, so that's a little far fetched, right? Or is it??

Anyway, so the moral of this story is, watch where you sign up, try to remember exactly all the places you did the signing, or more importantly, read their nuking policies closely beforehand...