Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Stalker Net

So for a long time, the OSU people search has been affectionately known as "stalker net" to OSU students. (it is also the finger database, if you're a UNIX fan)

They list a lot of information on there, and for a long while many people didn't realize that it was up there. You see, you have to request that they kept information private. It defaults to public... And so it got its name, "stalker net," because you could instantaneously find out lots about new people you met (or didn't really "meet" in the strictest sense of the word).

Well, to the shock of me and a few others, apparently a Google search for "stalker net" turns up OSU's people search as it's first link!! What's funny is that there's nothing at the people search (even in the HTML source) that refers to stalker net! I'm GUESSING that Google has read a lot of e-mails/postings/etc. that refer to the people search while also referring to the term "stalker net" and it was just so common that it put 2 and 2 together? I dunno. Either way, it's really funny.

1 comment:

Jenn Onofrio said...

Good GOD! That's pretty creepy!

Why do they do that? Allow non-OSUers access to all that information, I mean?