One of the favourite passtime of many people browsing the Internet is searching for their own names.Seeing ones name in Internet definitely makes the majority happy as very similar to having faces shown in TV.Internet research says a staggering 67% people have searched for themself or some other close friend in google.While the motive is not always good and intentional,but for either way lets take a closer look at the Searching techniques and how they can be used to get the most desired search result.
Searching for Your Name in Google
Searching for other Names in Google
So basically searching by name is like finding a needle in haystack.Well perhaps searching the haystack would have been easier but we exactly are not looking for the needle anyway.
The methods exploited will be more or less same.So Google it out or use pipl.com to get the desired search for ya.Only thing that counts is that how well do you know or knew the person.That my friend is explained in the next section.
Going gets Tough
"When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going".Going by this famous quotes,lets put forward a test case.You want to search a person whom you have never seen so the posibility of searching that person by picture is very less.Next gather as much information as you can about the person and then literally begins the filtering process through lots of social networking accounts.Any information can be helpful.Employer,School,Education,Interest,City....you get the idea.A word of warning,I didnt found orkut results in the search.
The Question Straight from Hell
The obvious question that might come to your mind is that what if that person is not on facebook or any other so called network.As stated earlier you may want to search orkut once again using orkut's search interface.Orkut being one of the oldest social networking site still might hold some tricks up to its sleeve.So once again we say that the person you are trying to find is not on social network.There is however another traditional way of finding a person though is a little trivial and time consuming task,but the success rate increases with each small knowledge of Father's name,Mother's name,Locality...etc....
Kolkata Centric Solution
Ladies and gentlemen behold the Calcutta Telephone Directory which still kicks a punch.Though there is another slight probability that the person no longer uses a BSNL landline but still is worth a try.The results at http://www.calcuttatelephones.com/newdirectory/dqresidential.php are failry hits owing to the fact that you must be knowing some few details as mentioned above.
Last But not the Less
Get a professional detective to do your job or else go for a Feluda style enquiry into the matter.
How to Remove Your Name and Info from Google
With all these research and facts there might remain another fact that you dont want your profile to be visible.Here is what google has to say,
Like all search engines, Google is a reflection of the content and information publicly available on the Internet. Search engines do not have the ability to remove content directly from the Internet, so removing content from Google or another search engine would still leave the original content that exists on the Web. If you want to remove something from the Internet, your best bet is to contact the webmaster of the site and ask him or her to make a change. Once the content has been removed and Google's search engine crawl has visited the page again, the information will no longer appear in Google's search results. If you have an urgent removal request, you can also visit our help page for more information.
Google Privacy Policy
Usually google search gets all the info it can find about you and posts them in chronological order,while it will be difficult to remove oneself entirely from google but it can be done to a certain degree by making the name appear later in pages.Usually people dont go beyond page 3 in google search unless they are dead crazy about finding somehing real hard.
In case if that's a website or page you want to remove(that you own) check out this link to google webmaster.For other websites(that you dont own) the best option is to request the webmaster to remove it.Drop a mail and see if it helps.
Social Networks
Now as we can see the best way to do it is to go to various social networking sites and deselect/remove the option from settings.It should say something like include me in search or make my public profile visible.Once removed the result will take a few seconds to a few days to update.And voila you are gone from the internet but still present like a shadow of a soul.
Conclusion
Well enough Gyan and Enough Stuffs...the most important thing is to maintain a level of privacy and respect other's privacy over the Internet, though for myself I believe there is nothing called privacy in Internet .Its all a open network where if one knows their way the will even find the Tiger's milk as well.But since everyone has the right to defend their own privacy thus the best path is to follow three basic rules.
- Never try to access information that might harm some one else
- Never do it in the unethical way
- Keep looking until you find it.
