The trail you leave on the Internet

There’s an article in the Washington Post with a headline of “As Web sites come and go, so too could the information you entrust them with”. In addition to the bad grammar, my first impression was “Tell me something that I don’t already know.” But I decided to give it a quick look.

Here’s the paragraph that struck me:

Consumers might find even bigger surprises when an entire business fails. Bookseller Borders this year auctioned its customer database, including purchase history, in bankruptcy court. Information about users on defunct gay youth site XY were put up for sale, too, until the Federal Trade Commission stepped in to prevent the sale.

Not a new moral of the story, but reinforcement of an old one: Don’t share any information that you wouldn’t want your mother/spouse/children/employer to see.