I was googling myself today* and I found the 5th search result prominently displayed “Private and Confidential” in its title. That was a little unfortunate, as I’m sure that formal discouragement will encourage anyone searching for me to click on the link.
There isn’t anything wrong with the content. It’s just a link to a PDF of a cell-phone-based credit card authentication system that I was investigating as a startup possibility while I was at UIUC. After I decided the business idea was a no-go I turned it into a project that SigEmbedded worked on for the 2005 EOH.
The annoying part is that I apparently forgot to remove private/confidential designation from the document before giving it out on the mailing list. Openly distributing documents marked confidential can hurt your legal standing on defending other documents marked as confidential in the future. Thankfully, I think these rule apply on a per-corporation basis, not really on a per-person basis.
*No, this was not about ego. Just managing my online identity. But I won’t rule out ego for the future.
On a related topic, it’s fun to see that one of the later results featured a title that included “rarely used textbooks” for the book I co-authored…
Hey Morlok,
Just found your blog (yeah I was bored at work today), thought it was funny that you were blogging about googling yourself since I had JUST googled you like 30 seconds prior to reading it…
Anyways, can you send me an email? I have a computer question, but figure I shouldn’t occupy your valuable blog space.
Thanks,
Fong…
really? my comments needs “moderation”??
I tried googling “ryan j. morlok” (with the quotes), and the results were….interesting.
Whoa! I’ll say!