Anonymising Yourself In Spite Of Your Blogs

This week, we have a question asked, in Blogger Help Forum, which has been on my mind, in various formats, for some time

Does anyone know what Google does with it's residual copies of blogs after deletion?

What's in the search engines may stay there forever.

• There is more than Google Search (really, there is), and the various search engines feed on each other.
• Replacing content with a stub may remove cached content selectively.
• Fuzzing / smokescreening your data may get rid of your personal data, or may make it less visible at least.

You can't get rid of everything that says something "bad" about you. People have opinions, you will always have some enemies, and your enemies will always have something bad to say about you. Even Mother Teresa probably had somebody who said bad stuff about her.

Look at social scrapbooking, like Yahoo Glue. Something added to a Glue page, true or not, will be indexed by the search engines. Even if a Glue page is scrubbed, the search engine residue from a Glue page will remain for a while. Once again, dandelions is a relevant analogy.

The issue of privacy on the Internet is explored, here and there. Anonymity and privacy, with respect to blogs and search engines, is a complex subject; this series of posts will only scratch the surface.

In Mountain View did Page and Brin
A stately Googleplex decree:
Where blogs, the sacred data, ran
Through servers measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

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