Ever been embarrassed by the sorts of things people could find out about you just by using Google? I guess I had thought it was a problem affecting most people who use the web a bit, or whose friends do, until it occurred to me that for some particular people this isn’t a problem.
These are the people with names so common that it is impossible to tell them from the thousands of other web kiddies with the same name. My name, my real name, is fairly unique.
What if you have a really unusual name? Well, you could use a psuedonym that’s really innane, like James Connor. Or Peter Smith. Or you could anglicise your name: use the more common English name that is similar to yours.
Hmmm … I don’t know. Even with my very common name, it’s not impossible to find me as long as you know what I do for a living.
That said, my name might actually work against me at times. If interested parties, eg prospective employers, have to wade through five pages of unrelated Google results just to find me, they may well give up.