mail from distant relatives

[cellio]

I just got email from a distant cousin. He's written me once or twice before (looking for my father), so that's not all that surprising.

What is surprising is that this time, he sent the mail to my LiveJournal address.

Err? Have I been found? I mean, it's not that this journal is a secret, but I've never discussed it with any of my relatives, nor do I think most of them would care, and that email address isn't published anywhere but here. "Security by obscurity" isn't secure, but this surprised me. So it's a bit of a puzzle.

Well, in the unlikely event that the journal and not just an email address has been found: hi, Terry. :-)

Comments

[gregbo.livejournal.com]

I was able to search ask.com for you by name and find links to your LJ from a blog of a friend of yours.

[cellio]

Ah, good point. Thanks. I hadn't looked at ask.com lately.

(Hey! A 20-year-old publication -- my only refereed technical paper, actually -- made the first page of results. I never expected to see that.)

[gregbo.livejournal.com]

I checked some other SEs, and your LJ is in the top 5 results of Accoona, Google, and Yahoo for your name.

[cellio]

Ah, I see what you mean. While I've set the flag on my journal that should prevent reputable search engines from indexing it directly, links in indexed pages and aggregators can still trigger it.

Fortunately, I've long followed the maxim "if you'd be upset to read it in the newspaper, don't post it in public view". A public journal is public, after all.

I guess I just didn't expect relatives, especially of that generation, to be net-savvy. :-) (As a small indication, when I have to provide a user name for some net service or web site, my last name is almost always available.)