It’s scary how much information it’s possible to glean about someone just by putting their name into Google. I had an interview last Friday and I knew the name, beforehand, of the main guy who would be interviewing me. He has a fairly uncommon name, so I decided to dig for some dirt on the Internet and struck gold! The guy was obviously gay, lives not far from me and is involved in various organisations. I knew his age, the faces of some of his friends, and that he suffers from piles (be very careful about emailing those medical advice pages on websites, or at least use a false name!).

I only searched on this guy to build up some sort of picture of him in my mind prior to the interview, to put a human face to a very formal situation and, also, to find out what sort of person I might be working under. But, when I started to find out very personal information, it didn’t sit well with me and I felt I was crossing the line into Stalkersville. Just because the information is out there in the public domain for anyone to see, doesn’t, necessarily, make it alright to go looking for it – you wouldn’t go searching through someone’s rubbish, even if it was left on a public street.

There’s a lot of debate right now about the authorities watching people, but there’s also the separate issue of information we willingly upload to the Net for all to see (he says, writing a very personal blog!), or things written about us that we have no control over. Consider, hypothetically, a long-ago, minor conviction or an incident you might have been involved with that got reported by an online news service and published to permanent webpages – I’m sure some potential employers Google names, too.

For those of us used to sites like Gaydar, this form of pre-emptive selection has been around for a while. Suddenly, you could make an informed decision based on a guy’s dick size, role, fetishes and level of hairiness without the messy business of actually having sex. If you’ve arranged a date with a virtual stranger, it’s only an extra click to find out all manner of information about them – he volunteers for a cat protection charity? Well, I’m a dog person.

So, did this guy come close to the image I had pre-formed about him? Yes, I suppose he did, but based only on an hour or so of responding to his questions and some brief, informal chat before and after. As for the job, I haven’t heard yet and, as long as he doesn’t Google my name, I think I stand a good chance. Oh, and my name isn’t really Joe ; )