Re: Namesakes (was Re: OT: Would You Vote for this Candidate?

"Brian Harvey" <bh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:gdrled$1984$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Dennis \(Icarus\)" <ala_dir_diver@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
How would they distinguish your name from other names you searched?
If you google three names:
"amy guskin"
"brian harvey"
"kay shapero"
how would google know which was yours?

Well, for starters, by geolocation. Do Amy and Kay live in the Bay Area?


Ever search or anyonme else who winds up living in the Bay Area?

And also by deduction based on the other things they know about my search
history, as compared to my web page, for example.

The point is, once you have me narrowed down to three possibilities, it's
pretty easy (at least if you're a good statistician) to get the rest of the
way down.

The US Census Bureau has all this confidential information about each of us
that we're required to give them every ten years, and they're required to
keep it confidential, even from other branches of the government. They do
respond to statistical queries from researchers, /but not if the number of
people selected by the query is smaller than some huge number/ that I don't
remember now, but it was something like 2,000 or 20,000 -- because if they
allowed smaller queries, it would be possible using overlapping small queries
to narrow down to a single person.

So if they think thousands of people make too small a data set for safety,
then three poeple are /way/ too small a set.

Ahh...so I see asolution:
each day, google 100 names from your local phone book.
within 30 days you'll have enough (or 300) o that you could google yourself with impunity

Depending on your ISP,your IP address may change before you get finished though.

Sorry if this is considered off topic, but the whole thread doesn't have
much to do with B5 anyway. :-)


Not the first time that's occurred :-)

Dennis

..

.

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