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Google never forgets; a cautionary tale.

Article Excerpt
WE ALL HAVE ONE, BE IT A MOTHER, a well-meaning grandparent or a particularly mischievous college buddy. They're the people who insist on sharing embarrassing stories--which are invariably supported either by a gallery of photographs or a library of shaky home videos, with those you had foolishly hoped would never see them. For example, my mother enjoys producing the front page of the Vancouver Sun, circa 1981, on which I am pictured stark naked and sucking on my bottle while sitting on the edge of a public swimming pool on a particularly hot summer day. The upside was the fact that, like my naked baby picture, these embarrassing moments could be managed, the mortifying game of show-and-tell limited to small audiences, and its effects mitigated with healthy doses of self-deprecating laughter.

The internet, quite unintentionally, has changed that. Thanks to what amounts to a universally accessible photographic memory, the internet essentially creates the digital equivalent of an unauthorized biography for everyone who leaves a digital footprint. This biography is full of things you might like to share and others you might not, from your comments in an online discussion group to your Grade 12 graduation pictures or some ill-conceived poetry you submitted to an online journal a few...