As any one should do these days, I was performing a search on my name on Google ( could have been Yahoo) to see what came up. I’d been struck to find complete contact info for a friend of mine I hadn’t seen for a while through a web search- not a White Pages search that is.

I was in store for a surprise indeed… The French version of 123 People came up among the top results. I was flabergasted to see they indicated an email address for me and offered a link to my very own ( previously deemed personal) wish list on Amazon.fr!

Amazon, keep my account info private !

Why on earth would I want the entire world out there to see my wish list on Amazon? I might like my friends to see it maybe, but how could Amazon allow my private account information with them, with my full name, to be searchable by a web bot?
To their credit, I got a response within two hours to my contact email, on a Sunday, January 3rd- that’s customer service for you. AND the response was intelligible, even intelligent.

I was simply explained by Damien that Amazon makes client’s wish lists accessible to the World by default, just in case someone out there decides they want to buy me something…Amazon is much obliged to help. It is up to each and every one of us, at this point, to be aware of this and to choose a more private setting by going into our Wish List setting.

Amazon wish list setting selector

Yes, thanks Amazon, but in the real world, we DON’T go around distributing our wish lists to every stranger on the street. Why? Because we don’t WANT to tell them about us. So get off the Kool Aid, and focus on how people act in the Real World before deciding to set your settings, because you might anger a few people there, if they ever find out.

Job Etudiant.com puts it all out there- for ever !

Please note Job Etudiant.com has nothing to do with JobEtudiant.net.

The other way 123 People had been able to grab an email address for me is I had had the insanity of publishing a want ad for a babysitter over a year ago on their site. Little did I suspect they would publish, not only the ad text, but also ALL my contact info: full name, address and phone number, on their site- up to a year after the ad had appeared!

People do NOT expect want ad sites to publish their contact details guys. CraigsList.org has always offered to anonymize posters’ emails, even! Please please please guys, keep your heads on…

In the meantime, I strongly discourage from posting any ads on jobetudiant.com/ unless you wish to become a public figure. JobEtudiant.net does not seem to have such a policy.

— > The powerful people crawler 123 people in France.

– > Amazon.fr’s wish list account area where you can remove the default public setting.