IF SOMEONE WANTS TO LET YOU KNOW ABOUT THEIR LIFE, YOU WILL GET AN EMAIL OR A PHONECALL

Just how private can you be in this world? NEGATIVE. As long as you are logged into the world wide web some way or another, people will be able to find you.

Mr Washy was tracked down by an old acquaintance when he searched for Mr Washy by his web name. The web name gave a list of sites where Mr Washy had left comments before. This person was able to track Mr Washy's life for the past few months or years. All these little bits of comments, sites visited and details leave a trace of his life in this www.

He subsequently received an email from this person congratulating him on the coming nuptial plans. Not cool, we say. Felt a bit like being stalked on the www.

The existence of social networks like Facebook or Friendster, Myspace and what not proves that people do not really enjoy their privacy very much. By posting a status or pictures of your holiday online is announcing to the world your life, sort of letting people read you like an open book. But how many of these people are actually friends you want to share such moments with. Or are they acquaintance who asked to be your 'friend' and you simply added them for the sake of increasing the number of 'friends' on social networking pages to make yourself seem popular.

If you are an important enough person in someone's life, that someone will call or email to update you on details. If you are not important enough and tend to want to search for details of that someone, best to remain as that sneaky little person you are and not expose yourself by sending an email to the someone to say you have browsed through his or her life. If you are looking for privacy, stay away from any form of social networking as much as possible. Google or any other search engines do not protect privacy. The www is a big open book and it can trace all steps unless you are on secured sites. Try typing in your own name in one of these search engines and see what comes up.