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Become Ungoogleable

joeyh.name

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Re: Become Ungoogleable

#21

Post by codetrotter »

Aurornis wrote: post #8

> Nobody really expects to be able to find anything of value in a Google search now This is a categorically false premise. The kind of statement that only makes sense when you're in a deep bubble and entirely removed from the average person's use of the internet. Deliberately removing yourself from Google is fine for the author who is more concerned about taking an ideological stance than they are about being discove…

If everyone on HN stopped using Google and started using DuckDuckGo. And we told all our friends and family to do the same. Would it have an impact?

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#22

Post by wittyusername »

The process is somewhat straightforward: - Search your full name, your username, your phone number, pieces of your last 3 addresses. - Check image search in particular For each result: - Google their remove me process and execute it, if they have one. - If not, find an email contact and ask nicely. Make up some excuse - If that doesn’t work, email a more formal GDPR right to be forgotten note if you are in EU. - If that doesn’t work, Google has a GDPR removal process if you are in EU.

Now wait 1-2 months and do it again. Now wait 1-2 months and do it again. ..

After about a year you should be able to reduce your surface area tremendously.

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#24

Post by chaostheory »

AlbertCory wrote: post #3

I thought the method was to change your name to something extremely common, like "Janet Brown." A variant is to take the name of some celebrity, so that all the search results are for him or her.

This only helps until someone has an email address or some other detail like where you work. Then you have to use something like Optery which costs about as much as a premium netflix sub

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#25

Post by KRAKRISMOTT »

codetrotter wrote: post #21
Aurornis wrote: post #8

> Nobody really expects to be able to find anything of value in a Google search now This is a categorically false premise. The kind of statement that only makes sense when you're in a deep bubble and entirely removed from the average person's use of the internet. Deliberately removing yourself from Google is fine for the author who is more concerned about taking an ideological stance than they are about being discove…

If everyone on HN stopped using Google and started using DuckDuckGo. And we told all our friends and family to do the same. Would it have an impact?

> If everyone on HN stopped using Google and started using DuckDuckGo

*Bing, DuckDuckGo's own indexing is fairly limited compared to other search providers like Brave. Most of DDG's index comes from Bing.

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#26

Post by xwdv »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #12
fooyc wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google would do anything to make it harder for others to crawl the web. Killing RSS was part of that strategy. News sites will implement these DRMs, but of course they will still allow Google because it is their source of traffic. Alternative search engines and good bots will be locked out.

Not just Google, Cloudflare is working hard on it too.

Cloudflare works hard but Google works harder.

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#27

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

codetrotter wrote: post #21
Aurornis wrote: post #8

> Nobody really expects to be able to find anything of value in a Google search now This is a categorically false premise. The kind of statement that only makes sense when you're in a deep bubble and entirely removed from the average person's use of the internet. Deliberately removing yourself from Google is fine for the author who is more concerned about taking an ideological stance than they are about being discove…

If everyone on HN stopped using Google and started using DuckDuckGo. And we told all our friends and family to do the same. Would it have an impact?

Everyone on HN isn't enough to have an impact. And telling friends and family isn't good enough because changing default behaviors is very difficult in practice and they would listen do you, but ultimately keep doing what they're doing.

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#28

Post by picometer »

I think this could be a bad idea for some prople, and here’s why.

I was just searching an old teacher of mine to see how she was doing. I knew she was super old-school (doesn’t even have a smartphone, let alone social media profiles) but I thought, I’ll just see what comes up - it’s a little lower friction than calling her.

She still doesn’t have any online presence except for one thing. The top search result for her name was a Project Veritas video where they had cornered her to ask some questions about her workplace and skewer her for whatever soundbites they could get. It was heartbreaking.

It’s an example of the benefits of the “security through obscurity” security posture. If there’s lots of info about you online, then it waters down the impact of any potential negative information.

The “stay offline / stay ungoogleable” security posture, on the other hand, is fragile with respect to random spikes of negative information.

Reality is that there’s a gray area and most people have middling risk tolerance in this area. As for me, I rarely post on social media and have never deliberately cultivated an online presence, so I’m somewhat ungoogleable. But not so much that someone couldn’t find me if they really tried. An seo-heavy event like that Project Veritas thing would probably take over my SEO presence, but I’m okay with that risk, and I also have the skills to spin up an official personal site if I want to.

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#29

Post by dewey »

codetrotter wrote: post #21
Aurornis wrote: post #8

> Nobody really expects to be able to find anything of value in a Google search now This is a categorically false premise. The kind of statement that only makes sense when you're in a deep bubble and entirely removed from the average person's use of the internet. Deliberately removing yourself from Google is fine for the author who is more concerned about taking an ideological stance than they are about being discove…

If everyone on HN stopped using Google and started using DuckDuckGo. And we told all our friends and family to do the same. Would it have an impact?

Not even on HN people are united in preferring Google.

Personally I tried to switch many times and always made my way back, and I'm not even really in the Google ecosystem unlike others.

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#30

Post by xwdv »

Aurornis wrote: post #8

> Nobody really expects to be able to find anything of value in a Google search now This is a categorically false premise. The kind of statement that only makes sense when you're in a deep bubble and entirely removed from the average person's use of the internet. Deliberately removing yourself from Google is fine for the author who is more concerned about taking an ideological stance than they are about being discove…

> This is a categorically false premise. The kind of statement that only makes sense when you're in a deep bubble and entirely removed from the average person's use of the internet.

The average person isn’t going to google an individual to find their blogs or whatever. The first stop is figuring out their social media destinations. You would hardly expect to find really anything about a person on Google that isn’t a link to their socials. Or perhaps an article related to some crime.

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