I recently typed my name (which is pretty unique) into Google and it
came back with 4 or 5 hits. One of these hits was a porn site; the
short description given with the link contained my full name as a
character in a fictional story. I followed the link but it lead to
the catalog/index of the porn site?s contents and I was unable to find
the specific story that listed my name. The experience was a painful
shock and because my name is so unique it is hard to believe that it
is a coincidence. I?m trying to find out what I can do about it.
Is there anything I can do to have this link removed from Google?
Is there anything I can do to have my name removed from the site?
Are there any sites where people talk about having had a similar
experiences and what they did about it?Hi, graceanne.
I'm sorry you've had to deal with this. I don't have any conclusive
advice, but I did (do) have a similar situation myself. I had a unique
username that I used to use fairly extensively that was used in a
similar way. A few years ago, I did a simple ego search on the name to
see if people were talking about me, and boom: porn everywhere. Not
even just regular porn, but some pretty gross stuff. And if some of
the sites are as advertised (I don't click on the links), some may
even be illegal. Granted, the username is not my legal name, but the
trail from that to my legal name is direct and to locate.
Further, the context in which that username was mentioned made it
pretty clear it wasn't a coincidence. They were talking about ME. In
my case, the sites using my name were not exactly upstanding
businesses, either, which leaves me without normal avenues of
recourse. Many of the sites were apparently hijacked from their
rightful owners, including some .edu sites, and the sites themselves
tended to contain malicious code in addition to the porn. And there
are thousands of them, so it was useless to try to really do anything
to stop them. I just tested it. I searched on that username and a
unique phrase that appears on a lot of those sites, and I got 2,140
hits to porn sites. And that's just the subset that uses that unique
phrasing.
Your problem is pretty localized, so you can try reporting the site to
Google. aceresearcher describes how to do this in the first link
pinkfreud posted above. (The form is at
://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html)
But if that doesn't work, or if the problem spreads, know you have
company. Me, I take a little solace in the fact that those sites
hijack the names of all kinds of celebrities--from Britney Spears to
Rodney Dangerfield to little old me--and they're just trying to profit
off of our fabulousness.
Yeah. That's the ticket. They're riding our coattails, basking in our
reflected glory. Ha! I pity them, really.
Good luck whatever approach you decide to take.You may be interested in comments made to these similar questions:
http://www.answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=375524
http://www.answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=355593#If you have any other info about this subject , Please add it free.# |
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9 January 2009 |
cameltoepants.com |
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