I had two experiences recently where I was easily able to find out information that should not be readily available. One was amusing, but the other was a little creepy. And what was scary was that both involved a simple Google search.

I’m aware that when talking about this sort of thing (especially over the web) you should avoid giving details so as not to give the wrong people ideas. However, in this case the processes were so simple that they were the first thing that occurred to me.

The first experience was a call for my wife which I took while she was out. They must have had some policy about giving details because they were reluctant to leave any message, even their name. I was curious, so after the call I looked at my caller ID. A google search of the number brought their name and company straight up and even let me know what they had been calling about.

Now that may not be a big deal, but the implications of the second incident were little more serious. We are borrowing someone’s car while they are away and they’d left the key with a neighbour and given me the neighbour’s number. Unfortunately I managed to loose the piece of paper I’d written the number on. I did remember the address, but the White pages online doesn’t allow you to search by address (for good reason as you’ll see). A quick Google search of the address brought up the phone number and the name of the neighbour (it was on a document the local council had made public). When I rang the place a child answered and told me that her parent was out picking up her little brother and would be back in half an hour.

In other words with no more information than an address I was able to establish that a child was alone in a house and roughly how much time before an adult returned. This is not information that just anyone should be able to get! It certainly made me think that I’m going to teach my child quite strictly what information they are allowed to give out over the phone.

The internet has made all sorts of data much more available, which is good thing in many ways. However, a result of this is that we need to be careful about what information gets out there. Especially since it’s often a combination of seemingly harmless details that can be used, and this is hard to predict. We do need to be mindful of anything we write down. As I see it the danger doesn’t commonly come from hackers getting into secured databases (though this can happen). The far more likely risk is a few publicly available details from different sources being put together for a use you don’t expect and would not condone.