A Special Name

Well, they say things look different in the light of a new day, and so they do. I do think I overreacted a little, but oh well, it's done now, and I'm going to live with the choice that I made.

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Today, Grad Daniel asked me whether I knew someone, giving me her name. I didn't know of her, so my first instinct was to Google her. The first result was:

HOT MILF VIDEOS FEATURING (person's name)

Well, I don't think I've ever hit Ctrl+w so fast in my life, given that I didn't want someone glancing at my screen. There's also the fact that my search has now been logged by the company's security gurus. I stomp over to Grad Daniel's desk, and ask him why he is asking me about MILFs. He explains that he just got an email from someone with that name demanding that a certain issue be fixed right now, which was sent to a very large distribution list (something that's generally frowned upon, as you end up spamming many people unnecessarily - one of the downsides to having a distribution list called "Technology" is that every now and again, someone mails the list, which has a few thousand people on it, asking for help getting their password changed. Then starts the ridiculous reply-all messaging, "This list is not supposed to be used for password changes!", etc).

I remember when we first got the Internet at home, one of the first things I did was Google my own name - since some of my classmates did it at school, and one of them found a news article that mentioned them from some sports club or something like that. I wasn't really expecting to find anything about myself, but I was curious, so I did it anyway. Lo and behold, I found out that I share my name with a porn star. Although she has become a lot less prominent since, and someone else who shares my name is now the top result.

It worried me for a long time though, especially when people started writing about how recruiters will now do an online search for you, to try and get a glimpse of the person behind the resume. I don't know if I've ever been turned down because someone has looked me up and found the adult video actress instead. Though I like to think that it's unlikely, because she is American, I recently had an automated background check fail, because the details I supplied didn't match a person with a similar name living in Singapore (note: I said similar name, we did not have the same name, and the name on all of my documents matched the name I supplied in the application).

I wonder how easy it would be for me to impersonate one of the other people in the world with the same name as me. Especially in large companies, where it's unlikely that the human resources team can remember what every single person in the company looks like, and there are often people who don't upload their photos to the company directory - or have outdated photos. Which reminds me, I should probably upload a photo of myself that isn't from when I was super tanked for the Arnie Twins' birthday - which may or may not be a picture where I found some really muscly dudes and photoshopped my face onto one of them, and which I may or may not have sent to someone who works in the industry that I want to move into. Not the best idea....

This is where super spy training would have really come in handy. I think movies make such a big deal about how good spies are at shooting things, or climbing down the rooves of skyscrapers to get into some office building (see James Bond), but one of the best skills they have is to be able to convincingly lie about something, which may be something they don't even know anything about. I wonder how they get so good at it, as it's not really something you can practice, unless you are a sociopath, and you like going out to meet new people just to lie to and manipulate them. I guess I'd never make a very good spy. Better stick to my day job.