Digital identities: it's too late to stop now

Before joining something such as Match.Com, it’s possible to have a free perusal of the folk available in your region. OK; so you have to extend your immediate area to a radius of about 9000 miles to make it interesting but there are some quite nice looking, reasonably sane sounding potential partners out there. As I suspect I’m possibly a little difficult (which is a euphemism for mouth works prior to brain engagement), but not that strange, I assume that, whilst there’s likely to be some odd folk around, most onliners will be in the similar age bracket where it’s difficult to meet other free spirits. Let’s face it, you know no more about someone you might meet in a bar than those souls out there in the ether. Not that I go to bars. Further, my children, or one in particular, is always telling me that everyone I already know is weird. The trouble is that once you’ve parted with money, all the decent looking people disappear from cyber space and you’re left struggling. I gave it all up as a bad idea; and now find that it’s less expensive and taxing to sit tight and wait for your past to catch up; which, if you have a digital identity, it will.

I was contacted by Bob.

I first knew Bob when I was seven years old. Allegedly. Bob found me quite easily via my digital footprint. About seven years ago, I joined Friends Reunited which involved me leaving a four line biography: past schools; marital status; number of children; current place of employment. Having failed to find anyone I either remembered or wanted to contact, I lost interest after about three weeks. But the information remained extant. So Bob, who was searching for old schoolmates, found me. Then he ‘Googled’ me and at the first attempt up I popped accompanied by a handy photograph that my place of employment had usefully posted.

This is a dilemma. On one hand, there is an issue of vanity: it’s quite nice to think that one is so important that one’s work & achievements can be published world wide. On the other hand, there are all sorts of implications associated with being so readily ‘available’. For a start, when I joined the dating agency, it took a long time to select a photo which I was happy to share with the unknown world. The image on my work website is NOT one I’d have chosen. However, this isn’t really the point. What if I don’t want people to know what I look like? Or where I work?

Bob pointed me in the direction of a class photo of us that someone had posted on Friends Reunited. Here we are: each a literal child of the sixties, there for harmless posterity and for our families. Are people currently posting innocuous photos of today’s children? Who is looking at them? Why? When you or someone else writes on your Facebook wall, what does this say about you? Is this creating an unwanted identity?

Too many questions. I think Bob’s ok. He sounds like someone who doesn’t think about the seedier side of cyber life. Also, fortunately, I’m not really eleven years old. Watch this space that I’m sharing with the world.