When a Google People Search Turns Up Unpleasant Information

Back in March, Google caused quite an uproar altering its algorithm in a major way to make sure that content farms and other low-quality websites don't make it to the top of your search results. They even tried to put control into the hands of the searching public by giving them the power to block results from specific websites when they searched. While all that is just excellent, what does Google do to put power into the hands of the consumer when it comes to search results about himself? If you were to perform a Google people search on yourself and find upsetting information, how come you can't do anything about it? Unless you can prove to Google that there's something illegal or unethical about how that information comes to present something about yourself, there is very little that you can get Google to do.

If you are unhappy in any way about what your own name turns up, if you feel that the results don't represent you accurately, there is very little that you can do, usually, short of setting up a few websites about yourself that will bring the right kind of information to the top. There are business people out there who have endless trouble with this kind of thing – Google destroying any chances they have at success. They may, for instance, have had an old consumer file a lawsuit against them 10 years ago. Since that happens to be quite an interesting morsel of information, anytime Google receives a search about them, that lawsuit might turn right up. Even if it isn't really relevant. The trick lies in trying to find out what you can do about it.

When something on a Google people search is unflattering or really unfair and inconvenient, you could try to contact the webmaster of the website that has the information up. While this can work for the individual webmaster, if anything about you appears on a large and popular website, you could have quite a time convincing the webmasters to even talk to you. Should you succeed though, you would need to do a thorough job to the remove the URL from Google's index.

If you don't really succeed in convincing the webmaster to do this nice thing for you, which, if you think about it, is the likely scenario, Google asks you to do something rather unusual. You need to open a couple of blogs or websites about yourself so that Google people search finds the best information about you in a place that you designed yourself. The other offending websites will be pushed rather low in the top 10.

If nothing seems to work, a drastic step could work - you could need to change your name so that your name is no longer associated with things that Google has information on you about.

Take Care With Your Account Info

The Internet has opened the world up for many people. You can now find more information than you could possibly manage, and many people have found employment and spouses through online activities. Old friends are reconnecting, and missing people can be found. Any advice you need on anything is out there as long as you know how to search it out. On the other hand, there is a darker side to the Internet. It has opened up a whole new world for thieves, con artists, and swindlers. This is why no matter how much or how little you do online, you have to guard your account info.

You wouldn't think to share things with a stranger on the street that you may leave open to the public online. Are your social network pages open? Do you really want strangers to know when you shower or that your home will be empty because you are going on vacation? One step in keeping your account info safe is to keep a tight seal on social networking pages. Think about the security questions you answer to secure your bank account. These things often include your mom's maiden name, the name of your first pet and other personal tidbits. If you leave your Facebook open to the public, thieves can get most of this right from your page. Your account info is at risk.

Along the same lines, your account info is protected by those questions, so change the questions. You often have the option of writing your own questions or picking from a long list. Choose questions that are not commonly used and for goodness sake, make up your answers. You don't have to answer these truthfully as long as you can remember what you put for your answer. Designate a notebook to keep in your home with all of your passwords and answers to your questions. If you answer the questions with wrong responses, no one can use such things to access your account info, but you can look up what you put down if you get locked out.

Passwords are still essential online to protect your account info for email, banking, Paypal, and your social network pages. Don't make the mistake of using passwords that are easy to remember, refer to members of your family or your hobbies, and certainly don't use the same password twice. You have to use words that mean nothing to you personally, and you have to put random numbers in your passwords. This requires you to keep notes on all passwords, but your financial security is at stake. Random, impersonal passwords with numbers and characters (if possible) go a long way to guard your account info.

Lastly, you can protect your account info by being very careful about links you click on. If your friend posts a video on your news feed on Facebook, and you are pretty sure they would never do such a thing, don't click. If you get an email asking you to sign into your bank account or Paypal account, don't do it. Call the company on the phone about the issue mentioned, or at the very least open up a new browser window and type in the address you know for the homepages of the service or business. Never click the link or your account info will be compromised. Con artists and scammers pray on the optimistic and the dreamer – so learn to be a bit pessimistic online, and remember that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

The Google Search Tool goes Social

It was about more than a year ago that Google first began to try to acknowledge the wealth of information there was on the social networks in its search results. When you used the Google search tool to search for anything, your results page would show you links from people on Facebook that you knew and you would see results from other social networks like Twitter as well. But that was a year ago. Today, Google is taking the biggest step it has ever taken in trying to make its search more social.

The Google search tool, to most people, is their window to the web. For the most part, they know where they go on the web only because of the options Google presents to them. But still, people are beginning to accept that social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter can have some pretty important ideas for them too. For things like ideas on what books to read, for where to go for the holidays, or where to buy stuff cheaper, people find Facebook and Twitter to be far more rewarding than a simple web search. Asking their social networking friends for recommendations, they'll have their questions interpreted far better than a search engine ever could, trying to pick relevant information out of the Internet.

Starting now, your standard Google search is going to include information of the kind you would find on a social network. Actually, Google's search results have done some kind of social networking search ever since the year 2009. Back then, you could create a Google profile for yourself, and connect it to your Twitter account or your LinkedIn account. That way, when you tried to search while logged in into Google, the bottom of the search results page would show any kind of results from your social networking friends as well. The problem was that not that many people went to the trouble of creating a Google profile and searching from within their accounts. And anyway, no one ever found it all that useful. If you wanted to visit the Bahamas, what were the chances that someone you knew on Twitter or LinkedIn had been there?

Now, search for anything and the Google search tool will give you posts that everyone you know on the web on nearly every social network has posted. And it'll be a right at the top of your search results, and not just a footnote. You'll also see if there is a friend you have on a social network who happens to have posted a link that's relevant. It doesn't have to be material that they've written. If they like a link that's relevant, you'll hear about it. Think about it - if there is an article on a subject that you are searching for that a friend of yours has approved of, wouldn't you be more likely to read it? In fact, that's what the Huffington Post does.

There's just one little problem to all of this. The new social networking results that Google intends to show you will only be presented to you if it's in the public domain. Since most Facebook posts are private, Google will have no access to those.

Rethinking Internet Security at a Time when Hackers think Nothing of Hacking into YouTube

How do you know that surfing the Internet is getting more risky by the day? You know, when the website of Matt Cutts, search engine guru, and Google genius, has a warning attached to it on Google that it may have been compromised. This happened a few days ago, as people searching for the Google head's website found out. It's happening to thousands of websites that haven't secured themselves properly; hackers and criminals take control of these websites and try to attack anyone who visits then. Google hates to be directing its searchers to websites that may harm them. And so, these days, you see a new kind of internet warning on certain websites. It says “this site may be compromised”; and it's a warning that means that Google believes that some intruder may have taken control of the website. And this is on top of the warning that Google gives you when it is completely positive that there is a website that is distributing viruses.

You would be surprised at how far criminals can go to make an attack possible. They will for instance, design a website and maintain it for months until antivirus Internet security packages and search engines around the world begin to recognize that website is legitimate. After maintaining that website for many months and getting a clean chit from the Internet security packages and the search engines, one fine day (usually a Sunday when there are no tech staff at work who can fix anyone's computers or recognize an attack), they will put lots of viruses on the website. The website then will only stay up for that one day and try to infect whoever comes by on that day. The criminal will then take that website down and start with an all-new website.

So how far have these criminals succeeded in infecting websites and commandeering them? So far, they've been very successful. In fact, 75% of all phishing attacks on the Internet come from legitimate websites that have been taken over. They just look for websites that seem to have poor defenses. They know that on reputed websites, people feel safe enough to use the same login name and password as they do for their banks and credit cards. They know that once they get a few login credentials from a reputed website, they'll have at least one or two that will open bank and Facebook accounts. And once they get on Facebook, they'll tap all of a person's friends and try to get some financial information out of them. Websites like YouTube and Bebo are under particular attack.On Bebo for instance, not long ago, users came up against a very well-done animated page that looked completely official. It directed them to enter their financial details in a form it provided.