The fiction: Scroogled by Cory Doctorow | Evil Search Engine by Bruce Giussani 

The reality: Net danger: Online searches are new and problematic tools for border guards | Is Google Evil?, Mother Jones | Does Google know too much about us?, Slate | In Google, Yahoo should we trust?, Truthdig | Facebook begins abusing its members, MSN | Bruce Schneier Q&A, NYT | Interview with Cory Doctorow

This is why people should really pause to consider exactly what they are posting on blogs and social networking sites, and why. This information will quite possibly follow you around for the rest of your life. What might have seemed like a good idea at the time will not seem so amusing to a prospective employer (or as above, a border guard). There is also the question of what Google (or Microsoft and Yahoo) are doing with my email. Should I believe that when I delete it, it is permanently deleted? Seems unlikely to me.

Also, surely I can’t be the only person who finds the concept of Google vans with panoramic cameras driving around taking pictures of pretty much everything at street level more than a little creepy? 

This doesn’t even begin to address what government agencies can and wish to monitor of your communications.  

More: Electronic Privacy Information Center | Electronic Frontier Foundation | Scroogle (Google search results without the cookie tracking)

‘No need to encrypt it lads, we’re sending it in the post. Safe as houses’. I’m lost for words on this one.

The missing information contains details of all child benefit recipients: records for 25 million individuals and 7.25 million families. These records include the recipient and their children’s names, addresses and dates of birth, it includes Child Benefit numbers, National Insurance Numbers, and, where relevant, bank or building society account details.