Your name is all over the internet

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They (this is a general they) tell you that your information isn't private. That anyone with the know how can find something out about you just by a few keystrokes on google. This isn't a lie, or a scare tactic. You can pretty much find out anything about anybody with just a few minutes work. It's not always going to be true or up to date information though. You don't think about all the ways your name is out there online. It's not just credit card purchases that might ping your name but anything. Remember that one time you were in the newspaper as a child with your class? Yup, bet you could find that online. Or what about when your grandmother died and you were named as one of her survivors on the obituary? Bet you didn't think about that information being accessible. Places do actually take these tidbits of info and secure them on their own servers and sell the info to anyone wanting to know. People searches, someone wanting to find you, maybe even innocently. Classmates.com for instance? I was searching on google with just the first middle and last name of a relative of mine. I even used his suffix. A suffix, in this sense of the word, is a numeric value to differentiate between people of the same name. I searched but didn't find what I was looking for, however I did find a relative of mine and lo and behold I was mentioned. Further research on other sites would have my name listed in several different ways. I didn't tell them they could use this info, but then it's easily accessible and not "locked" under any kind of legalities either. One name showed up as it did in reference to another relative because of my grandmother's obituary. "Such and such is survived by ___ ___ who has one daughter ____ ____(me)." Of course this doesn't mean you shouldn't take all measures to secure your credit card information, and in many cases this particular of information is not easily attainable. Just make sure you are using sites you can trust, or paying through paypal or a third party payment processor you can trust. But your name? Nah, that's gonna show up everywhere, even if you didn't know it. I'm still trying to figure out how one variant showed up linked with my father (the variant has my first name, middle initial and my married last name, no mention of maiden name at all though it still linked it to my father). Ugh, but seriously, how am I to find out any more info about my grandfather online if my dad keeps popping up everywhere instead??