geometry

In the past couple of years, I've been posting Google reviews about places that I visit without thinking. (restaurants, hotels, dentist, doctors, tourist attractions, airports, airport lounges) Basically anywhere that I travel to that's worth reviewing.

I currently have a little over 600 reviews and these places are in 18 countries. I've never actually gone back and read my own reviews, until yesterday. My flight was delayed for 4 hours due to weather issues. I got bored and started reading my own reviews.

The more I read, the more paranoid I became. My reviews are like a detailed guide for my stalker or angry scorned lover to find me in 5 minutes.(don't either one currently, thankfully)

Am I better off just deleting or editing some of my travel reviews just so nobody can find me? I actually considered the more drastic action of deleting my Gmail account associated with the reviews, although I'm not sure if that will make all the past reviews disappear?

deniah

When google changed reviews from anonymous to named - which was some years ago - I deleted the few reviews that I made on that platform.

There's enough metadata floating around to profile me I don't need another vendor capturing even more explicit info

RRDD

Jeannietx

It might be a good to delete the places you go currently, but those in the past shouldn't be a problem.

frobozzelectric

what i will do from now, wherever i am, i will look for a landmass nearest the antipode.

find some random chip shop there and give a review.

who am i kidding, whoever wants to find me can just turn on the chip in my brain anyway.

i have a lot of free time.

Kevin AA

Use a pen name (like I do on Yelp). Problem solved.

:D!

The antipodes of most inhabited landmasses are in the ocean. So you'll be visiting a lot of chip shops in Chile, Argentina, Spain, New Zealand and Indonesia.

frobozzelectric

....to actually make a quest of doing exactly that.

geometry

how does that work in my case? My reviews from the last couple of years include Germany, Greece, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, UK, France, Croatia, Russia, Iceland, Australia, Tonga, South Korea... plus 27 U.S. states(including Alaska and Hawaii, as well as Puerto Rico)...

I guess I shoudl start deleting the reviews of places that are within miles of where I actually live. (like my church, dentist, primary doctor, nearest McDonald, gas station, HOA office, etc?)

Loren Pechtel

Agreed. I normally avoid posting anything indicating I'm out of town but once I'm back, so what?

EricH

Patient: Doctor, it hurts when I do this.

Doctor: Don't do that.

geometry

Moses: Yeah, I was gonna put that on the stone tablets as the 11th Commandment, but I ran out of space, so I said "f*** it, 10 is a nice round number anyway!"

thelark

Years of posting hundreds of reviews and no one has cared - really think this is an issue?

geometry

ok.. I confess... I recently got my very first female stalker.

darthbimmer

OP, what exactly is your concern? Someone who wishes to target you can easily use public records / low-cost services and quickly turn up your home address and likely your place of work as well. Yet you're worried about... the chance that they might stake out your favorite burger place for an entire month hoping to bump into you there?