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It's simple - you should never put any information online that you are not prepared for ANYONE to see!

"My search history dates back to December 2006 - I presume that's when I opted into the service - and includes around 8,500 search terms"

This comment had me worried whether i'd opted in too in a fit of stupidity. Thankfully i didn't. Why on earth would you opt in?

The 成人论坛 may be interested to learn that hyperlinks can be used to link to non-成人论坛 webpages also. For example, a link to google.com/dashboard at some point in this article may have been of convenience to its readers.

To realise the size of your digital footprint, there's a scary site called 123people.co.uk, which draws together info about you from all sorts of places. And it's not just based on personal names: if you tend to use the same screen name for forums/newsgroups/twitter etc., there's an amazing amount of info that can be pulled together about you.

"It's simple - you should never put any information online that you are not prepared for ANYONE to see!" #1.

I agree.

The problem is that what someone puts on as a teenager or in their student days might come back to haunt them 30 years later. Both our judgment and perspectives changes as we grow older. I think Shonberger makes some good points on this issue.

Re: #2
This comment had me worried whether i'd opted in too in a fit of stupidity. Thankfully i didn't. Why on earth would you opt in?

Because Google refine their search results and tailor them to you based on your previous searches. For those who aren't particularly paranoid, it's very useful.

The problem is that what someone puts on as a teenager or in their student days might come back to haunt them 30 years later.

I rather hope that this problem will solve itself socially as people come to realise that years old photos of drunken student antics don't automatically mean that a would-be employee is a terrible person, any more than a lack of photos means that they are, and always have been, a teetotal saint.

Yawn. Rory this is a technology blog is it not? Perhaps you should spend some of our licence fee on talking about Dashboard itself instead or rehashing the same tired points about online identity and privacy that 40 billion other articles have covered and pointing out how social networky you are?

Mark Zuckerberg: "what you upload onto Facebook belongs to Facebook." Though now revoked, there was a period where facebook changed their Terms of Use, so that everything you've loaded up into your profile (personal pictures, etc.) belongs to Facebook, even after you've deleted them or closed your account. Basically, Facebook could do whatever they want with your stuff.
See this for a comparison with other social networking sites:
Unfortunately the reality is now that one careless photo can be taken completely out of context, blown completely out of proportion, and blight the future career or other prospects of the individual concerned.

Having "deleted" my Facebook profile in the past, and then subsequently reactivated it again to find everything exactly as it was, I'm pretty confident that absolutely nothing is deleted at all when you "delete" your Facebook profile. Given how valuable data about their users is to Facebook I wouldn't be all that surprised.

Matt Sharpe wrote:

"Having 'deleted' my Facebook profile in the past, and then subsequently reactivated it again to find everything exactly as it was, I'm pretty confident that absolutely nothing is deleted at all when you "delete" your Facebook profile."

The only way I have managed to do it is to contact them. You are then required to delete all the content (friends, posts and so on) which at that time you had to do one at a time. Thankfully I did not have a lot on there.

Once EVERYTHING is deleted, you then contact them again and they manually delete your account off the system

Then you cannot re-activate it.

I believe that since I did that it has become a little easier, but I am not sure how much easier.

Having "deleted" my Facebook profile in the past, and then subsequently reactivated it again to find everything exactly as it was, I'm pretty confident that absolutely nothing is deleted at all when you "delete" your Facebook profile. Given how valuable data about their users is to Facebook I wouldn't be all that surprised.
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Indeed it is not deleted, it is however made unavailable. It's kept entirely for the reason you found that sometimes people change their mind.

Bear in mind that even if it had been actually deleted it would likely still be on a DLT somewhere as part of the backup systems.

Okay, cant resist a little scaremongering:

I do worry that like a dog with a nice fresh bone, when we attached our lives to the online experience, we are simply selling ourselves to commercialisation.

This is not just losing control of your identity, but of your entire life. When the internet first landed in the hands of the general public, it was pretty obvious that it would be taken over by vast commercial interests and we would end up using the system the way THEY wanted you to use it, rather than the other way.

Strangely, I think governments have gotten caught up in the same net as the rest of us, rather than being the instigators, for a change.

Twitter, although harmless (and pointless) in it self, is however a symptom of giving in to the new world without realising what we are missing from the old one. This is not about technology changing the world, or even taking it over, it is about the control of this technology slowly and surely being taken over by a smaller and smaller number of companies.

I heard some teens arguing the other day about whether their lives were Google or MSN. They really felt that:

1. You are born
2. You learn to talk, right
3. You go on line
4. you choose MS or Google. (You always choose FB of course)

Then I assume you die sometime later.

Nothing else; everything subservient to those decisions.

There is nothing wrong with the internet, the technology or communicating on line.

However, with excessive reliance on a system that this world probably doesn't actually need to be able to function, we are trapping ourselves into a culture that is not controlled by people we can vote out. And that is just a little worrying.

What a poor article. Does he really believe that by hitting 鈥榙elete鈥� that all his Google data is wiped forever? There is screeds of meta data associated with usage patterns not the actual data that will not be deleted when the button is hit. SpinVox? What about the voicemail provider, what are their data controls surrounding his voice mails? Credit card usage patterns, shopping patterns and so on, and so on. What about the government鈥檚 records, can you hit delete on those? Oh but that鈥檚 right, we all trust the government and they never do anything untoward with our personal data do they? The more this guy writes the more he seems to demonstrate a complete lack of understanding about the modern world of data, personal information, who owns it and who poses the greatest threat by its misuse.

In terms of paranoia: my data is as a snowflake in a blizzard.

鈥淭he problem is that what someone puts on as a teenager or in their student days might come back to haunt them 30 years later.

I rather hope that this problem will solve itself socially as people come to realise that years old photos of drunken student antics don't automatically mean that a would-be employee is a terrible person, any more than a lack of photos means that they are, and always have been, a teetotal saint.鈥� #7
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To take it a stage further: its not just photos - it鈥檚 every comment you posted, every email, every exchange of SMS [txt] messages, chat exchange, every Tweet, records of every website you visited etc. Google now keeps a record of every search every person makes for 9 months; other websites may keep them stored forever.

Imagine living in a world where every conversation could be recorded, even intimate ones or arguments between friends.
Of course that doesn鈥檛 happen, but once you begin to communicate via the Internet or mobile device it does.

Would you be happy at the thought of having every utterance you鈥檝e made during your life quoted [and played] back at you? Would it be fair if it could happen?

Shonberger鈥檚 argument is that if you posted a comment on, say, YouTube (easily forgotten about thereafter) then after a set period [from months to years] YouTube would have to remove [delete] that comment and make sure it was no longer stored on its servers.

I think there is some merit in the suggestion.

"..... we are trapping ourselves into a culture that is not controlled by people we can vote out. And that is just a little worrying"

What is worrying is ANY UK government can throw you in jail with no explanation, using personal data that you have NO IDEA about or no control over!! And you fear Google?!

@ psycobdelic
you're dead right - safety in numbers here surely. Does anyone really care that much about you?

If people wanted to find dirt on any of us they could do so, the same now as they could 30 years ago.

Ah, I'm afraid you haven't quite felt uncomfortable yet until you have read a little section buried quite deep in Google's Terms of Service. As far as I can tell, Google's Terms of Service allow them to use every single thing you save, even in modified form. It's up to them to attribute it or not, but if you have any sort of Intellectual Property it appears to be a good idea to leave Google well alone. The permission you gave given by ticking the "I agree" box is "in perpetuity", which is legalese for "70 years after you die".

Proof? Look up Google Terms of Service, scroll down to clause 11. Just when you thought the limitations in 11.1 were sensible and something you could probably live with, along comes clause 11.2 which is so vague as to allow any use. Welcome to the new world, where one hand allegedly giveth your privacy back (forced by the Swiss), yet that other hand goes on grabbing..

In addition, Data Protection is also not quite what it's cracked up to be. If a business gathers data from you, it has to tell you why and what it's going to do with it. When it changes that use, it has to tell you. However, when said business gathers data FROM YOUR FRIENDS, no such obligation exists. Hence the Facebook idea to ask about friends, and the scary side effect of the Google Picasa tagging system.

If this makes you lie awake at night now, good. Educate others, as there is almost 9 years of counter privacy indoctrination to undo. You may have nothing to hide, but you still don't tell everyone your salary, close the curtains at night and the bathroom door when you take a leak.

Rule 1 of the Internet: assume anything you do gets public. Rule 2: read an agreement before you agree to it.

Rory I find this article rather naive, I realise you are aiming it at the "masses" but if you really want to highlight just how little control over personal data people have then surely you would do better to actually mention that most data is stored, for infinitum, on servers somewhere and can be accessed quite easily.

Perhaps when the "masses" realise this they won't find Facebook and other such "social networking" sites so inviting...

'In terms of paranoia: my data is as a snowflake in a blizzard.' #15.

There's a Chinese curse, 'May you come to the attention of those in authority'; in today's world it could be updated to 'may you fall into the media spotlight'.

Even snowflakes can be put under a microscope.

Rory, from a technical point of view, did Google have any issues combining a group of their sites like this? A lot of them did start out as products from completely separate companies. Did it require some serious rebuilding of their systems?

I'm curious to know Google's process of integrating services with their own. I notice that they have a list of products not yet available (I assume they put them there as they will one day). There's no mention at all of Youtube. Does Google have any plans to put Youtube on the dashboard so you'll have a quick overview of your youtube account?

The privacy question is always there and it's worth everyone keeping it in the back of their minds when they're online, but I think the really interesting part of this story is how Google goes about linking all their services, some of which have millions of users.

One last Offtopic point here, but this issue is getting on my nerves. I have a 1280x1024px resolution on my monitor, this is about a standard size nowadays (and with widescreens becoming more popular the width is getting.. wider). The column of text for the article and comments makes up only half the width of my screen. I know whitespace is nice, but why use only half the screen?

'The column of text for the article and comments makes up only half the width of my screen. I know whitespace is nice, but why use only half the screen?'

One possible reason. In publishing (newspapers, magazines etc) it is known that the optimum length of a line, for ease of reading and comprehension, is around 60-70 characters. (For text in columns, 40-50 characters per line.)

"I have a 1280x1024px resolution on my monitor, this is about a standard size nowadays (and with widescreens becoming more popular the width is getting.. wider)."

There is no standard size at all nowadays. Designers have to design sites for a huge variety of screen sizes, from huge resolutions like 1920 x 1200 (and above) all the way down to the tiny resolution you get on your mobile. Faced with this it's no surprise that sites have opted for the fixed width approach to website design. If you have a huge monitor it's highly unlikely your browser will be occupying the whole screen anyway.

Designers have to design sites for a huge variety of screen sizes, from huge resolutions like 1920 x 1200 (and above) all the way down to the tiny resolution you get on your mobile. Faced with this it's no surprise that sites have opted for the fixed width approach to website design.

Seriously? The designs have to work on a variety of devices so they're made to only fit one particular size and this is 'unsurprising'? I'd have thought the obvious thing to do would be to mark the content up properly and allow the browser to render it how ever best fits the device.

@ _Ewan_

Twisting my words. The fixed width approach does not just fit one particular size, it's the best fit for a huge variety of devices.

For leviathan sites like the bbc, this is the best approach. There's a reason that the vast majority of news sites are fixed width, and it's not just about designers wanting control.

Thought I'd wade into this argument with "Wot I reckon".

I've always kept several identities running on the internet. I use my real information for very little, namely anything business or money related.

Anything else is done through various personas, such as the one I'm using now. It's very easy to protect your real data, just don't hand it out to people!

@24, 26

I'm actually a professional web developer, which is why it bugs me so much. Statistics show that the vast majority of users are on 1280x1024 or 1024x768. So the optimal design would be for those resolutions. Also the statistics are showing that screen widths are getting wider (obvious with widescreens). I think the quantity of users less than 1024x768 is around 5%, and mobile device readers less than that.

While this column of text fits nicely at the top, there's no reason that every time it passes the right menu that it stays strictly the same width. It could expand quite easily. What's more with the increased line-height of the design update a while back, it is extended further down. The content is being spread too thinly.

Pixelvision #28.

"I'm actually a professional web developer.."

then you will be using css3 to cater for different devices and resolutions, no?

Statistics show that the vast majority of users are on 1280x1024 or 1024x768. So the optimal design would be for those resolutions.

No, the optimal design would be one that scales to fit. That way it works regardless of what size or shape my display is, and independently of whether I choose to have the browser take up all of it or not.

I really don't see how "The fixed width approach does not just fit one particular size" - that's surely the whole point, it's fixed to one particular size.

jr4412: Pixelvision #28.

"I'm actually a professional web developer.."

then you will be using css3 to cater for different devices and resolutions, no?

Yes. I would start by putting a class on each comment div which has a percentage width value to fit the content div (checking it with firebug I can see that it's called main_content) so that when they pass the sidebar div they expand into the available space. They'd also have a min-width value set to ensure it doesn't shrink too much.

_Ewan_:I really don't see how "The fixed width approach does not just fit one particular size" - that's surely the whole point, it's fixed to one particular size.

While I agree totally that there should be some scaling here, you need to have some constraints. It's never as simple as making the whole page resize for the browser window. Your first comment above on this topic was correct when you said it should resize for the browser. However from a designer's perspective it's a very bad idea for the entire page to do this.

SpinVox concern me, they're policies are very muddy, and they are very woolly when it comes to explaining them.

Oh and people talking about resolution and css etc... Yes all that is possible, but it doesn't change the fact that the human eye/brain finds the optimum page width to be around 70 characters, any wider and its natural to find it difficult to read.

So what happens is there are generally 'relative width' columns to the left and right of the 'fixed width' main body column. Of course if this was a commercial site that empty space would be filled with Flash ads - I prefer the white space to that, so please don't change 成人论坛

I touch on this on my blog about over at . I think that Google is trying to cover Yahoo's new approach of making things more personal, with Yahoo promoting the "It's You" campaign.

The problem is there is a lot of data that you would hope isn't visible to all across the web. I hear it more and more about privacy concerns, eventually there will be a law that prevents search engines doing such things, but until then we just have to be careful