Nervous about your privacy on the ‘net and your ability to control it? I’d like to tell you an uplifting story about one company, Rojo, and the behemoth search company, Google, and what happened with my privacy.

I often look at the referring pages to see how people have come to my blog or any given post within it. It’s enlightening to see where people came from (which often surprises and delights me) and also to see the various search strings that ultimately led someone to click on one of my posts.

Someone did a search in Google for “steve borsch”+ Eden Prairie and ten results were displayed. Much to my horror, one of them had my full signature (address, phone, mobile #, etc.) in it. It turns out Rojo, two years earlier, had inadvertently exposed bug reports publically and Google had spidered them, rendering them searchable (Note: this inadvertent exposure by Rojo was fixed long ago).

Though it’s simple to find just about anyone and data about them if you’re search savvy, this was far too naked of an exposure. I immediately contacted Rojo through email. Did my email fall in to a black hole at Rojo? What was the likelihood that a major company like Google — enbroiled with Justice Department data requests and the shitstorm around cooperating with China on their search restrictions — would care at all about some guys exposed information being brought to their attention by a feed reader company?

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