I've always been surprised by the amount of information people will post about themselves on sites like Facebook. Moreover, even if you delete an email, it's never completely gone - any computer technition with a reasonable level of skill can retrieve anything you've ever written or received.
In short, once you put something out on the Web, or send an email, it becomes public information, yet too many people assume that if they delete a posting later that it is gone.
Well, it's not.
In this note from Fortune Magazine (via a tweet from Lindsay Pollack), the article discusses how much information an organization with reasonable internet skills can find out about someone.
Here's an excerpt:
The so-called deep Internet (also known as the Deepnet, the invisible Web, or the dark Web) is not new, but enterprising techies have recently come up with ever more sophisticated algorithms for trolling its vast contents. To get an idea of the size of the deep Web, consider: Researchers estimate it's more than 500 times the size of the everyday Internet you can see with an ordinary search engine...
.... this means that "Amazon wish lists can crop up. So can your results from the last marathon you ran, and whose political campaign you've given money to, and whether your house is in foreclosure." Ever filed an application for a patent? Declared bankruptcy? Fallen behind on your child-support payments? Been investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission? A Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) search probably won't reveal any of that, but a deep-Web search could.
Here's a video from CNN discussing the subject:
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