PRIVACY

Usually if someone takes the time to put up a website, it’s because they want as many people as possible to look at.  But we’re all familiar with the perils of social media

But there are many websites that are private, ie, require a password.

This website is set to be “not readily visible” to search engines.  So it’s not as public as a site “readily visible”, but it’s not password protected either.  

In theory, the only people to check it out are people that have been told about it and have an interest in it.

Search engines like Yahoo and Google find information because they have a feature called “web crawling”.  They have servers the constantly troll everything on the internet in the whole world and when they find an identifying “tag” or “slug”, they index that into the list of search results.   

So what exactly are “tags” and “slugs”?  They are specific labels in a website that can be linked to something else somewhere else on the internet anywhere in the world.  These include first and last names of people, specific geographic locations, specific names of objects, etc…  

That’s why if you Google your name AND you have a Facebook account, that’ll show up in the search results.  To minimize that, don’t use first AND last names on your FB page, don’t mention specific locations like “picture of Holland lighthouse” on your FB page because then in theory, a search engine can link you to the lighthouse and can link the lighthouse to you! 

And don’t mention specific names on your FB page.  For example, don’t post you received and new Samsung TV for Christmas.  Because then in theory, a search engine finds that post and then links you, Samsung and Christmas to each other!  Of course there is the phenomena of information overload so unless you’re a public figure, even if a search engine begins to link you to other things, who cares?  And if no one cares, then even if you are linked, it probably won’t show up in the first several pages of search results. 

So within the context of this website, specific identifying information is kept to a minimum and is not linked to any tags or slugs.