It will, won't it???
What did surprise me was the number of times my username - Grumpy Old Bob - showed up on other peoples' web sites and forums, though for some odd reason Google seems to ignore my username unless I enclose it in double quotes. "grumpy old bob" shows a couple of my posts on the first page of search results, along with several other people also claiming (erroneously) to be Grumpy Old Bob, but without the quotes I'm not even in the top thirty pages.
I have used the same username, but obviously NOT the same password, on almost every forum and comments page I have been on, and it's surprising just how many things I have felt the need to comment on. I vaguely remembered commenting on my local newspaper's site when one of the pubs I drink at suddenly closed a year or two ago, but had totally forgotten writing about the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing , and the Online Safety Bill (HL Bill 137). There are many other examples, especially on forums, but it's the number of random sites I've commented on that surprised me.
I don't, and won't, do Facebook or any of the other social networking sites, but there's still loads of my information out there. Luckily I'm not neurotic about privacy, so I'm not bothered, but it does show how easily people can give away a lot of personal data even without social networking.
My excuse is that I always have half an hour on the computer every Monday night when I get back from the pub, so it's the beer speaking, not me.
