What’s in a name?

I’ve recently grown very uncomfortable about my internet privacy, or lack thereof.

Facebook. Twitter. MySpace. YouTube. Bebo. LinkedIn. Friends Reunited. Face Party. Flikr. hi5. LiveJournal. WAYN. Yammer. I’ve signed up to them all at some point.
Banking. Council tax. Bills. Food shopping. Loyalty cards. Video rental. I manage these all online.

All of these accounts! All of my personal information dancing around the intertubes! I’m an open book! An eBook, if you will.

In fact, “uncomfortable” is an understatement. I’m concerned. I’d like to go back in time and set up an entirely new online alias. All of my details, opinions and insults, would become theirs and Amy Daynes? Well, she’d just be ‘that girl with the curly hair’.

I am a copywriter working in digital advertising, so I am keen to advertise myself online and make use of all new digital technologies. And so I have. But the difficulty lies in the crossover between my professional presence on the web and my personal one.

“amy daynes” currently returns 394 results on Google and, rather alarmingly, “amydaynes” returns about 364,000. The latter is my username for almost everything and so Google will return every action I have made on these accounts in the past. That’s not cool.

I don’t mind people knowing I’m a copywriter and seeing my work. But if people can just search “amy daynes” and read my comments and opinions on different subjects, all spread across various blogs, forums and sites, well that’s perturbing.

I am a stalker’s dream. Just look at Facebook photos for a visual and visit my site to find out where I work. I’ll even give you regular Twitter updates in case I deviate from my usual routine.

Hmm. I think this digital alias thing may not be a bad idea.