Know Your Customers (Dirty Trick?)

An Internet search is becoming a standard part of background checks. If it's posted where the public can access it, it will be found.

Look at the American Idol contestant who got cut from the show because of some risque' photos on her MySpace page... Or the whoop-de-do Michael Phelps got into because someone had a cell phone camera at a party...

The same goes for videos, blog posts, rants on review sites, forum posts, anything you post online. Unless you take great pains to be anonymous, the dots will be connected...

Edit: That said, aggregating public data to enhance your marketing message is completely ethical in my mind.

Notice, I said aggregating, not stalking. It's okay to use the data to look for common characteristics among a group of buyers. It's not okay to use the email from a purchase, look at, say, a Facebook profile, and use that information to direct a pitch for another product directly to that buyer. That would hit me like a Peeping Tom ringing my bell to offer me a new rash cream...

Privacy is a polite fiction. As politeness declines, so does interest in maintaining the fiction.

Yes, you can find a lot of information about your customers from their email addresses. But it's a good idea to maintain the fiction, and ask them for whatever information you want to know. Privacy is a bond of respect and trust; if you break someone's privacy, you're showing disrespect, and you'll have trouble regaining their trust if they ever catch you.

And since YOU have no privacy, either, someone will inevitably find out what you did.